I lied to Mark

It's ok Sweetie....
Keep reaching out and communicating. You are going through the grieving process. You just lost him so it's okay. You will go through different stages. My mother died almost a year ago, and some days I am ok and then there are days when it seems like it just happened. but the post before this is right...don't wait too long before you talk to someone else. We are here for you, but you may need someone else. Take a vacation or go visit a friend. Sometimes that helps. Then again...just be. Allow yourself to grieve. Praying for you.

KLScoville said:

Thank you
I do have a grief counselor that comes by once a week plus another widow (whose husband passed in October) who doesn't live far from me comes over. Also friends of Mark who have gone through the same exact thing (cancer kills) but they lost their loved ones over a year or so ago talk to me but they are all up in Ohio. Also I have a journal I write into daily, I write it to Mark. That helps too.

Not only am I grieving the lost of the love of my life. I am financially strapped because he is gone. What little life insurance I had on him is gone. I am okay for January but now I am started to fret about February. Unless I win the lottery or find a job I don't know what I am going to do. I have been looking for a job daily, putting out applications. I am getting some assistance with food stamps and my unemployment has run out. There are days when I am so overwhelmed with tears and anxiety with the fact of losing my husband, I am also mad at him for leaving me. I don't know what I am going to do.

I miss him so much! All I do is cry anymore. The ativan that the doctor gave me (who I saw for free) is working a little but I can't afford to go see him for something else to help me with my anxiety and depression. I am just so lost without him. I miss my Mark!!!

Thanks for listening
~Kelly
wife of Mark, RIP 11/14/11 Stage IV nsclc w/ mets
diagnosed 3/3/11

I know you are overwhelmed!
February is a minute away. Sometimes I feel like I am going to be in the same boat if my husband passes before me. What about widows benefit through SS? I know that may not be a whole lot, but that is a start. I know you are overwhelmed. I think there are some agencies who will be willing to help some kind of way. Right now you have a lot going on and so much is in the way. I pray that you get relief. I am glad that you got help with the grief. It will pay off in the end. So many people are going through the same that you are. If I run across some agencies or ideas I will let you know. Hang in there.

KLScoville said:

Thanks Jackie
Thanks Jackie, but I have look at all outlets and there aren't much out there for widows from cancer! I got a death benefit from SSDI of $255.00 (yes, it is true that is all you get). I am trying my hardest to get a job with no luck. I will keep trying. I will hang in there. The only thing to take me now is a broken heart because I don't believe in suicide (sp?). I will die from that..and finally be with my husband again! I miss him so much. 2011 was the year from hell for all of us!!! From the very beginning to the very end!!! Worse year of my life!!! I would rather be dead too!

Thanks for listening!
~Kelly
wife of Mark Scoville RIP 11/14/11 Stage IV nsclc with mets.

I get it!
Kelly my heart sincerely goes out to you. My mom passed one month to the day after you lost Mark. Every emotion and feeling you are experiencing I am experiencing. I don't think we lied to them when we said we'd be OK I think we honestly thought back then we would be OK. I've quickly learned I just can't script this part at all. I have zero control of this overwhelming rollercoaster of emotions that hit out of nowhere.

When I read your comments about your unbearable feeling of loss I'd swear I could have written them in regard to the loss of my mother. We were very close. I looked out for her my entire life. Tomorrow is my mothers service. I don't want to go so bad I could easily vomit just thinking about it right now. I've "performed" well for the public all along the journey of dealing with her cancer. I don't know if I have it in me any longer to perform one more day to make it appear as if I have it all together. I am so sick of the stupid things most say. They mean well but honestly they have no idea how much some of their comments actually hurt rather than help. They want to magically delisciously make things appear as if life is going to be sunshine and lolipops now that they are gone so get with it and start living. Until they've walked this horrid journey they just have no idea.

I have to give it up to those who say they are concerned in my case. They know me well. I'd never ask for any help so they say .. "if there is anything you need just ask" knowing I'd never ask. They know I've been out money for the funeral, obit, and legal forms and yet that whole "if you need anything" seems to leave them confused. I guess I needed to video tape my year of hell to point certain things out to them.

I'm not stupid they would come up with an excuse real quick if I did ask. My mothers sister has been classic. She's actually a very wealthy woman. Owns several homes. Lives off her diseased mans SS very comfortably. I could go off about how she went from a broke woman to marrying that money and never actually acquired any of it on her own. But suddenly she has made it clear she is on a fixed income so she couldn't possibly help pay even for half of the funeral costs LOL isn't that a hoot? Again, I knew all of this in advance so none of that nonsense was a surprise. People are strange in that they think they are playing you sense you say nothing while you are dealing with this horror but I wish they knew that we are being very observant and will recall in deatail all of that nonsense.

At this point I refuse to have her remains inurned. I can't let the last bits of her go into the ground. It's all I have left of her. Not just yet. The horror and hell we went through for the last 9 months is haunting me. I focused so much on providing care for her I refused to let every day of more bad news effect me. I thought I had been valiant in pushing that all asside but from the moment she took her last breath it all came crashing back. Prior to diagnosis was endless day and night vigils cleaning vomit and bedpans and testing her bloodsugars confused that a new diagnosis of Diabetes could result in endless misery. We were in and out of the hospital so much with testing they new us by our first names. When entered into diagnosis we were swiftly shoved all over the place with surgical procedures clinical tests and daily reports of dispair. There was never a moment to just stop and take a breath. It was and endless zone of pure hell. We just responded like robots doing as instructed while remaining in complete shock. From the hospital she came home to die. So again we shifted quickly into that.

I actually don't know how I was able to set money asside while providing care for her but instinctively I knew I needed to prepare for that. I was careful enough to create a poppers budget for a few months after she passed. I've already had to readjust it because of costs that I didn't think I'd have out of nowhere. Now I must go back out into the world and find a job. I feel completely shellshocked. I've already been to one place tweaking my resume and talk about feeling like an odd duck still filled with so many emotions. It's very hard to continue to paint on a fake public face while your guts are being chewed up inside. You feel absolutely desperate and want to cry and beg for help but I refuse to humiliate myself.

I am going to berevement class starting this Thursday. The counselor has suggested meds as well but I'm not sure as of yet if I want to become med dependant. I cringe at the thought of seeing any of those bottles back in my home but I do need a lot of sleep. I'm actually amazed having lived this just how little sleep the body can go on. I'm still waking up after 3 hours of sleep hearing my mom calling me for assistance. I hate it.

My heart aches for you. I know every thought that runs through your mind and I'm so sorry you are having to deal with this because I've said based on what I've been through, what I've seen, what I've endured, and now what I'm going through that if I had an enemy which I don't think I do, I couldn't even wish this hell on them because it's too drawn out. It's a combination of ruin, dispair, death, disease, and it goes on unrelenting hour after hour day after day. Usually when you want to get even with someone you hit them good and hard once and you move on. This whole experience is gruesome torture. I honestly can't say I'm going to make it through this. Thats why I get so sick of hearing people say "It will get easier" they base this on their experience with losing a loved one and when I know that person and evaluate their loss with mine I want to rip into them and tell them there were things they never carried during their loss so their job of getting to the point of it feeling better was much easier and accessible. They actually were afforded time to grieve and to rest. They knew there own security in life was still covered. I'm not offered that option and I knew that all along.

It seems like I've shifted from one hell to the next. I don't know if I will have access to ever getting to the better. I wonder if I'm going to crack and become useless to even provide anything for myself. I'm literally going to be relying on "luck" to make it from this point on out and I'm not very hopeful these days when it comes to luck and God. Both seemed to give me the middle finger this last year not to mention it seems like even the lowest of low jobs which I'm willing to take there are at least 200 applicants so again I'm living life based on a lottery. Things like that never work in my favor and given the current past it's safe to say I'm not going to win that type of lottery.

Like you I do wish I were dead so all this pain will end. I actually have said that I'm already dead. I'm walking dead at this point. I'm not an advocate of suicide either but I've even thought of it as justified suicide or a mercy killing if I can't find something out there for myself. I'd leave a deatailed note explaining that I was more forced to end my suffering then continue to endure this horrid train ride. I refuse to be reduced to homelessness. When I see that coming then my options are very limitted and if I have an ounce of respect for myself at that point I'll have to consider certain things. I've been through enough.

I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor today crying in the new year eating candy realizing I have nothing to love and there is no way I'm going to love that greatly again so I can avoid the anguish of such a loss. There will be no one to share the joy of accomplishment if I get lucky. Even if there was someone it's not going to be the same. It's all so final. She's gone. Period, case closed. The person I looked after my entire life is no longer on this earth and the manner in which she left was horrific and I was forced to watch helpless to battle it other than make he comfortable while facing the horror so I lied like you to ease her fears and told her I'd be OK.

I hate that I still think in terms of my mom being alive. The smallest task of going to the bank includes the natural pattern of calling her to ask if she needs anything while I'm in town. I can't stop that pattern. The second that happens that wave of anguish I try so hard to fight off hits. Then you have to drive through watery eyes fighting not totally going into full blown sobbbing. I play psychiatrist to myself talking myself away from embracing the anguish. I've even said whats the point of waisting the tears she's not coming back and it changes nothing. Sure enough about that time I see someone on the street that looks just like her or similar as my mom used one of those electric carts. I never realized until now how many people use them. It's like something is taunting me.

I'm so confused as to what the future holds and think that I'll make the wrong move and end up losing money faster going from place to place looking for a job and getting rejected that my poppers budget will be pulverized by using too much of it on gas. I keep wondering what in hell I did to be handed all of this hell. I know awful people who are living such full blessed lifes. I just don't get it at all.

2011 was the year of complete hell. If last year someone would have said write on note paper what things you could never live without and then put it in an envelope I'd swear every thing I would have written down is exactly what has been taken from me. I'm in complete shock. The only thing I did get from it is the numbing effect and no fear of anything. You could spit in my face and take a baseball bat and beat the snot out of me and I wouldn't flinch. I've also learned how to go without food to feed someone else because you only have so much money. So I'm good with top romain. If I were to drive up and see my home on fire I'd just keep driving and go park some place and close my eyes and hum quietly and in no way be surprised at that at all. I have fantasized going to the bank during a hold up and having someone point the gun at my head. I'd very calmly say... pull the damn trigger I could care less and I'd actually thank them.

You are in my thoughts.