So My Wife Died...

Cad · Jun 7, 2023

Gavinmad said:
The recording she left for you is your memories of the life you shared together and your two children. A special recorded message could never say everything she wanted to and would be something a grieving widower was likely to form an unhealthy attachment too.

Dude I think I have an unhealthy attachment just thinking about it if my wife were gone and I had such a recording, never mind actually having it and being in that emotional space. You're right but I can 100000% understand the desire to have it.

Seananigans · Jun 7, 2023

Cad said:
Dude I think I have an unhealthy attachment just thinking about it if my wife were gone and I had such a recording, never mind actually having it and being in that emotional space. You're right but I can 100000% understand the desire to have it.

The big mind-fuck for me is the way it all went down. Everything is normal (within context), then she starts not making any sense, and it's all downhill from there. I know that I would do very poorly with circumstances like that, knowing that I sort of had the opportunity to say goodbye, but not really because she was delirious. It's almost as if one extreme or the other is preferable, not the weird middle ground. Either boom gone in a car accident or something, or a managed situation with a foreseeable deathbed period.

Dunno, hard to explain I guess. But trying to put myself in that situation just kills me. I can't imagine, K KDow

Tmac · Jun 7, 2023

KDow said:
and I'm left with two young kids.

A couple of weeks back I inadvertently derailed the Jimmies Rustled thread and some folks suggested I start my own topic here.

I wasn't going to, but I'm kind of coming unglued a bit so I figured why the fuck not.

In some ways it's kind of what I expected. Right after she passed there was so much going on with regards to her funeral arrangements, insurance stuff, and everyone reaching out. While there was a lot of grief it served as a good distraction to get me through. Since her memorial on 05/21 and a lot of the administrative stuff is either resolved or under review its just been getting harder and harder.

My wife and I moved to Maine 11 years ago for her work. We have no family up here so its really just me. People say they want to do anything they can but it isn't like someone can just swing by for a beer. Its gotta be a coordinated event. We have a few friends up here but they don't have kids and I think it's already too much for them. I feel like fucking Eeyore.

I mean, I follow what the counselor folks say and make sure the kids see me sad at various times and I ask them questions about how they're doing - but its not like I would want to unload on them everything I'm going through even if they were much much older (they are 2.5 and almost 5). The rest of the time I'm by myself and while I still talk to my wife constantly that isn't really viable. So, when I do see another adult human - because my life right now is just so wrapped up in my wife, my kids, and our loss its just the only thing I can find myself talking about. I swear I used to be able to have normal conversations but even when I'm trying, something just brings me back to what I'm going through. And I know that's to be expected and its only been a month (It's the reason I'm typing this - it was 4 weeks ago today at around 9:00 am that she took a turn and we had to call the ambulance. She wasn't making sense and then I saw her eyes. They were yellow and I knew we were in trouble. Today I dropped my kid at preschool and looked at the clock on the dash and kind of lost it.) but it doesn't change that for a lot of people its too much to hear about and they're ready to move on.

Since her service I find myself searching for her. I cleaned our office and I'm looking through checklists and notebooks she had - seeing if there are notes or scribbles or anything to connect me to her. I plugged in all my old phones looking for pictures and text chains and voicemails. (if anyone knows how to get texts from really old android phones to a PC please let me know - usb doesn't show the database file). I was always the photographer with my friends in High School and College but afterwards when my wife and I first met it was in that weird period between old school prints and quality digital phone cameras. So while we were together for years and rarely apart in that time there are so few pictures of us during those amazing carefree years before our kids came. Post kids there are a million pics but like most people its mainly just the kiddos. I'm so afraid of losing memories of things we did and especially from earlier in our relationship. I'm the type of person that without a picture or physical object I can reference I forget everything. Could be last week or 15 years ago.

I know I need to talk to a professional to get through this and I'm sure between that and time passing things will get better, but right now the only analogy that comes to mind of how I'm existing is the scene in the first Avenger's movie where the Hulk says "That's my secret...I'm always angry." I feel like that but with my grief. There isn't a second that if I let myself I couldn't turn in to a fucking puddle.

With that said, whether it's vulnerability or stupidity. Here is a picture of me and my family from my son's 4th birthday last year. She had her mastectomy at the end of May (she's wearing a wig but that's what her hair looked like) and this was in the few months we were able to enjoy before her cancer came back. She has countdowns for their birthdays on her phone that any time I open it I have to see the days left on goals she'll never meet.

Also- Yes, they are gingers.

View attachment 476632

I'm so sorry to hear your wife passed.

Your fondness of her and desire to hold on to her memories tells me she was very special. And it's those very special people that give us the deepest grief. If they're shitty, there's really not much to miss. So, I'm thankful to hear that she was such a wonderful person, but also sorry that you're having to grieve this loss, and yet still thankful that she is so worth grieving.

What's a funny story you'd like to share that would give me an idea of the special kind of woman she was?

Tmac · Jun 7, 2023

KDow said:
Thanks for all the good ideas and support.

I'm pretty much following what @BrutulTM suggested. I'm taking a long pause before making any big changes. It would be nice to be closer to family and friends but I think for now I still have to let the dust settle. Believe me both my family and hers continue to push.

The good news is, my wife and I always planned to move. Our kids share a bedroom and we didn't think that could go on forever. So it isn't like she had in her head that this was our forever home. I won't be betraying her memory when we do go. We were never forever home kind of people. We've bought and renovated several old homes (Our current house was built in 1855) and may have even moved an additional time. The plan was to stay put for our kids from Middle School - High School graduation but any time before that was fair game.

I reached out to 2 different places to try and get some counseling / support group contacts but haven't heard back yet. I think I just need some strategies and some perspective.

The kids continue to hit me with zingers randomly that just wreck me. My son yesterday said to me: "If I work and save up 100 dollars to give to you, do you promise to be there when I grow up?"

My daughter repeats this mantra at least once a day: "Mom was sick, mom went to the hospital, mom didn't come home, mommy died". I didn't know where she got it from until I was talking to a friend this weekend who asked about how I told the kids the morning after she passed. I realized those are the bullet points of what I said to them that morning. My daughter had turned away and was facing in to the couch. I wasn't even sure she was listening.

I am so proud of what my wife did to prepare our kids as best she could. I still have to edit the videos and produce them (I have no idea how to do that and am learning as I go). I'm dragging my feet as I'm a bit anxious to watch them. We have pictures of her all around the house now, but I think it would be good for them to see and hear her more.

I bought a blue ray burner and once the "episodes" are done, 3 copies will be burned and a mini blueray player with each disc(s) will be given to a different family member / friend for backup.

To that end, I had considered adding a note to the end of my eulogy but decided it might come off too preachy so I pulled it back. It was about how if you asked almost anyone, but especially those with kids, if buying life insurance is a good idea. Almost unanimously people would say yes. But if you told them to write or record something to your family in case you die, people tend to recoil. Its too morbid, or that doing so might cause something bad to actually happen. My feeling is, the insurance is just a chunk of money. It can help with so many things, but it can't exactly help with the emotional loss. Almost everyone would give most if not all of it back to hear something to them from the person they loved. People also say, I don't know what I would say, and to that I'd tell them. It doesn't have to be the Gettysburg Address or some novel. "I love you so much, I am so proud of you, and I'm sorry I couldn't be there with you now" would pretty much do the trick. I know this, because for all the letters that my wife wrote and recordings she did. I didn't get one. It's OK, but man what I wouldn't give for something just to me.

I hesitate to give any advice, because I'm sure you're drowning in it, both good and bad.

So, take this with a grain of salt as you may not even find it helpful. But, the picture of your daughter turning away from you while you were sharing the news of your wife struck a chord with me.

There's a book called, "How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk." It was a game changer for me in learning how to be a better communicater. It really knocks it out of the park with kids though (also a bonus that we're all still kids in some sense emotionally).

Here's a link:
Amazon product ASIN B005GG0MXI

KDow · Jun 7, 2023

So today was a good day.

Turns out searching for my wife was warranted. I went on to her phone and she has stuff all over the place. In her notes app I found stuff she had written dating back to 2014. At first I thought it might all be journal / personal stuff but then there were things clearly directed to the kids and to the world at large. She was clear in some entries that these were intended to be found and seen.

Some of it were book ideas (she always wanted to write a book - she loved sci fi and Philip K Dick.) but interspersed were these entries about things she was going through in her life. All in its 215 pages! Thanks to Apple being akin to AIDS I had to download this app called iMazing to get them off the cloud and on to the PC. They are all in txt format and the font is Courier New but its something to work off of.

That lead me to another app she had on her phone called Notebook. I couldn't see what was there when I was looking on the phone but what I did see it was drafts of the letters to the kids; and while I did the printing and grammar corrections for them when we were putting them with the presents the week before she died, I really didn't read them. 1 - It was too hard and 2 - I knew they weren't meant for me. I didn't want to do all that scrolling using her phone and looking at them. I used that same program and downloaded them to a single txt file and copy/pasted it in to word. It's 93 pages - and in there are letters to me. I haven't read them. I have to get my head in the game and I don't want to burn through them too fast but they're there.

Even without reading them I feel better in a way I haven't in at least the last week. It may be fleeting but it feels good now.

KDow · Jun 7, 2023

Tmac said:
I'm so sorry to hear your wife passed.

Your fondness of her and desire to hold on to her memories tells me she was very special. And it's those very special people that give us the deepest grief. If they're shitty, there's really not much to miss. So, I'm thankful to hear that she was such a wonderful person, but also sorry that you're having to grieve this loss, and yet still thankful that she is so worth grieving.

What's a funny story you'd like to share that would give me an idea of the special kind of woman she was?

- I've been drinking so I'm probably over sharing but here goes:

In the early days when we started dating (2006 - 2009), when I lived in Boston and she lived in Providence. When a new Call of Duty would come out she would show up at my apartment with pizza and beer wearing a trench coat with lingerie underneath. She'd take care of me while I played CoD and we named the holiday Duty-n-Booty. (I was never great at Call of Duty).

- The first time when I met her family at her parents house she trolled the shit out of me. Their dining room was adjacent to their living room and they had a TV over their mantle. I was the only one that had a clear line of sight to the TV. They had some crazy satellite TV package with a million weird channels and she put on some weird anime channel with strange tentacle porn shit going on. I'm sitting there next to her mother and have no idea how to alert anyone that I can see some funky shit on the TV so I just kind of let it go. At some point her younger brother gets up and is like "What the fuck is this??!?" "Did you know this was on?" It was a running gag about me for far too long.

- We were at a family party of hers and her (at the time) 20 year old cousin was there. Her cousin was built like something out of a fantasy novel. She was gorgeous (still is) and had like F cup boobs (She's since had a reduction and for insurance to pay for it she had to go down to like a "B", her family simply refers to it as "The Travesty".) And my wife kept texting me while we were there to check out Sarah's tits (she had a low cut shirt on and kept bending over). I was surrounded by her crazy Italian family and I was certain if I HAD looked it would have been anime-fest all over again. When we got in the car to go home in the car our conversation went like this:

Her: Tell me you saw Sarah's boobs?

Me: No, I swear I didn't check them out.

Her: Fag.

- This bit is in her eulogy. My wife was always a doer and over achiever and we'd joke about it. One day not too long ago, we were in her oncologists office. It was the day they told her they were confident she had less than two months to live. They gave us the news and for some reason afterwards we were alone in the room just the two of us. She looked at me and said: "See, I did in 15 months what takes the average cancer patient 3 years at least". She asked me to make sure that was included in whatever I wrote about her. THAT is my wife.

Edit - Also I called places to try and talk to someone. Its ridiculous. There is a place up here called the Dempsey Center (Patrick Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy and Can't Buy Me Love established it) that specializes in Cancer stuff and their wait is 5 months to talk to someone. My PCP referral is 2 months minimum. I tried another place and I haven't heard back in like 6 days. I'm OK. I'm going to be fine. I just wanted some help because it made sense but imagine if I wasn't. Yeesh.

My wife died 1 month ago today. 05/08/2023. I honestly think I'll be OK. I'm more nervous about our anniversary. We were married 06/13/15. We'll see how that day goes.

Miguex · Jun 8, 2023

my deepest condolences. The best advice i think i got when I went through my divorce (absolutely not the same thing but the most traumatic thing I ever went through) was that whatever you are feeling is the right feeling. Healing is going to take a very long time, it took me years. Be your best for those kids.

Tmac · Jun 8, 2023

KDow said:
- I've been drinking so I'm probably over sharing but here goes:

In the early days when we started dating (2006 - 2009), when I lived in Boston and she lived in Providence. When a new Call of Duty would come out she would show up at my apartment with pizza and beer wearing a trench coat with lingerie underneath. She'd take care of me while I played CoD and we named the holiday Duty-n-Booty. (I was never great at Call of Duty).

- The first time when I met her family at her parents house she trolled the shit out of me. Their dining room was adjacent to their living room and they had a TV over their mantle. I was the only one that had a clear line of sight to the TV. They had some crazy satellite TV package with a million weird channels and she put on some weird anime channel with strange tentacle porn shit going on. I'm sitting there next to her mother and have no idea how to alert anyone that I can see some funky shit on the TV so I just kind of let it go. At some point her younger brother gets up and is like "What the fuck is this??!?" "Did you know this was on?" It was a running gag about me for far too long.

- We were at a family party of hers and her (at the time) 20 year old cousin was there. Her cousin was built like something out of a fantasy novel. She was gorgeous (still is) and had like F cup boobs (She's since had a reduction and for insurance to pay for it she had to go down to like a "B", her family simply refers to it as "The Travesty".) And my wife kept texting me while we were there to check out Sarah's tits (she had a low cut shirt on and kept bending over). I was surrounded by her crazy Italian family and I was certain if I HAD looked it would have been anime-fest all over again. When we got in the car to go home in the car our conversation went like this:

Her: Tell me you saw Sarah's boobs?

Me: No, I swear I didn't check them out.

Her: Fag.

- This bit is in her eulogy. My wife was always a doer and over achiever and we'd joke about it. One day not too long ago, we were in her oncologists office. It was the day they told her they were confident she had less than two months to live. They gave us the news and for some reason afterwards we were alone in the room just the two of us. She looked at me and said: "See, I did in 15 months what takes the average cancer patient 3 years at least". She asked me to make sure that was included in whatever I wrote about her. THAT is my wife.

Edit - Also I called places to try and talk to someone. Its ridiculous. There is a place up here called the Dempsey Center (Patrick Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy and Can't Buy Me Love established it) that specializes in Cancer stuff and their wait is 5 months to talk to someone. My PCP referral is 2 months minimum. I tried another place and I haven't heard back in like 6 days. I'm OK. I'm going to be fine. I just wanted some help because it made sense but imagine if I wasn't. Yeesh.

Those are all hilarious stories. Feel free to share more as they come up, if you find it helpful.

I particularly liked "Duty-n-Booty" and "Sarah's Boobs" not bc they're sexual, but bc it shows your wife had a genuine sense of humor and didn't take life too seriously. Which I'd imagine is tough to do if she's also an over-achiever.

I think a lot of guys dream of a wife that lets them be themselves. Those always seem like the best relationships. Seems like she let you be yourself too.

Nirgon · Jun 8, 2023

As someone who's taken some abyssal journeys I can try to offer some of what's worked for me. Focus on what she'd want you to do now, and by doing it every day perhaps that helps with the connection you're looking for. There's a whole big picture to life and you have your kids which are essentially, part her. Best I got.

Izo · Jun 8, 2023

Condolences. Thanks for sharing your pain and good memories. Only advise I can give is don't be alone with your grief, share, reach out, use your network friends and family. Stay strong, FoH bro.

KDow · Jun 11, 2023

So this week has been a kick in the dick. I knew it would be - leading up to our anniversary on the 13th.

The friends and family train of people coming up has pretty much run its course I think. Which is fine, it had to stop eventually. I think both me and the kids have to get used to life without special guest stars being around every couple of days so we can get used to what our life is going to be like.

To that end the kids have been really tough.

We've had some heartwarming moments and I've had some more good talks with my son, but a bunch of really hard stuff too. For the good - My wife used to sing the song Time after Time to them when tucking them in to bed. She'd changed the words around so it was about them and going to sleep. I never heard the whole thing because I would leave the room to clean up kid potties and do stuff like that - it was a special thing they did. My wife never got to record the audio of it. Her lung metastasis went nuts during the three week clean out leading up to the hail mary clinical trial at Mass General in Boston and she lost her breath completely (Our first trial infusion was 05/01 and she passed on 05/08). In my forensic search I'd hoped she'd written the lyrics down somewhere but she never got to it. Realizing this, the other day when I was putting them to bed I decided (before putting the usual Moana or Frozen soundtrack on) to play an acoustic version of Time After Time. By the time the song got to the chorus both kids were sitting up. My son smiled and just exclaimed "I know this! This is mom's song!". My daughter at first didn't quite like it because the words weren't the same as mom's but there was enough in there she could "sing" along with. Now we play it every night.

My son and I looked through our wedding album yesterday while his sister was napping. He remarked how different and pretty she was. He also said she wasn't sick. I asked him some questions and it went Ok. He asked me some questions and I don't even know what I said. I think in that talk he finally started to really understand that mom isn't coming back. Which has started us down a hard but necessary path. He asked me if mom still had a face. She was cremated but I didn't get in to any of that with them yet. That'll be a conversation years down the line. In the moment I didn't know what the fuck to say. Counseling for him starts next week.

My daughter can only be described as streaky when it comes to her mom. In a lot of instances my daughter outright avoids anything to do with mom right now. If I play a video on my phone, she'll come over - see that mom is on it and heads for the hills. Every night we go on our deck and say goodnight to mom. I talk to their mom, try to tell them about their day. Our son will say goodnight to her and sometimes says he misses her but my daughter nopes the fuck out. In both instances she isn't emotional or upset she just leaves. If I feel like its an OK moment and I ask her something about mom she just doesn't acknowledge it. I don't push but every couple of days (just like with my son) if I feel like there is an opportunity to mention something to her and kind of leave a window for her to say something I do it. But then, on the other hand she does things to connect with my wife. She opened up the closet in our bedroom this morning and pulled out one of mom's tops. She brought it back to her room in her bed and wrapped her favorite doll in it. Later at nap she was snuggled up with the doll and the shirt. Every brunette woman she sees that has straight long hair and is walking away she asks if that's mom. hard stuff. Not the hardest things that have happened but still tough. I'll keep the really hard ones out of here as their just super depressing.

The other things which are tricky but to be expected. My daughter who is 95% potty trained (just needs a diaper at nap and overnight). Peed on the couch yesterday and then peed on the rug today - like 15 minutes after using the bathroom. My son at bed screamed every time I'd shut the door and freak out because he couldn't see me (his words). Thats what I was getting at with him finally starting to understand that mom is gone gone. I was in and out what felt like a million times. I didn't want to sleep in there because of the slippery slope that can be and because I had to clean toddler piss out of the carpet.

Personally its been shitty for me too. I had that good couple of days but I'm back to feeling heavy and hollow. I've never had depression so I don't know what that's like but I really wasn't expecting just how the grief works. It hits randomly and suddenly. Its like the waves of a shitty hangover. You feel OK 1 minute and the next you're hugging the porcelain god praying for death.

I signed the kids up for their school next year. Son is going in to Kindergarten and they have a pre-k program that they opened up a slot for my daughter for. It's a good school and at first I was excited they got in but now I'm real anxious and sad about it. Not about them going, about me staying and being here alone. My wife and I shared a tiny office and have worked from home for over 10 years. We spent so much time together. For our son at the start of the pandemic we got a nanny because most of the schools weren't even open. When our daughter came along we kept the Nanny. So the kids were here with us all the time. We could pop out and see them whenever we wanted. They could run down the hall and give us hugs. Coming or going we'd see each other. We could randomly decide to do little things with them during the day. My wife and I talked about how weird and awful it was going to be when they were both gone during the day but we also talked about the opportunity it would bring. My wife planned to get back in to "fighting shape", we were going to go out to lunch more, get laid more. All of it. And now that's gone. In a couple of months both of my kids will be gone from 8 - 3pm 5 days a week. I'll be alone. I'll have work but Jesus I'm scared. The suck just keeps on coming. Then after school the Nanny will get them from 3 - 5:30. I'll see them for what 2 hours each night? And 45 minutes of that will be TV or me getting dinner ready? Then I have them on weekends? I can't even let myself think about it.

My anniversary is in a couple of days. It'll be shitty I'm sure. I'll probably post some pics here from that day 8 years ago because fuck it why not.

Anywho, thanks for coming to another episode in my depressing TED talk.

Lambourne · Jun 12, 2023

I recognize a lot of your actions from what my dad went through after my mom died. Collecting things, preserving memories, talking about things she did for the grandkid constantly, coming apart unexpectedly. Saying he was never going to be the same ever again.

My dad went to support meetings for people that lost a partner that the church organized and ended up doing some charity work. Nothing he'd ever done before since we never went to church or talked about problems at home. I think the value in it is coming to realize that whatever you're feeling is normal, and in creating some new memories.

As said before, there are no wrong feelings. Bad times are expected but there's also going to be times when you're feeling okay or a kid says something funny and you bust out laughing and you can end up feeling guilty for not feeling bad enough. It's all entirely normal, try not do judge yourself for any of it.

j00t · Jun 12, 2023

that sucks, man.

i don't know anything about you other than what you just wrote, so i don't want to be disingenuous with some lame generic advice about loss... but i'll tell you this.

it is an absolute must that you take care of yourself. don't focus on the kids... i mean, focus on the kids, but make sure YOU are okay. you know when you get on a plane that the stewardess says that in case of an emergency put your own oxygen mask on first before helping anyone else including your children? there's a reason for that. you know what they say helping a person who's drowning? don't help them unless you can swim extremely well. there is a reason for that. you will not only not save those people but they will drag you down.

focusing on your kids first sounds noble and what a parent SHOULD do, but it's wrong. your kids need you around and in good shape so that when THEY inevitably fall apart, they can lean on someone who is strong enough to hold themselves upright.

do what you need to do be healthy, whatever that looks like for you. you mentioned talking to a professional, so it sounds like you already have an idea of what you need. make sure you don't blow that off just because things seem okay. or, okay enough. imagine one of your kids was going through something like this. what would you do for them? if they said they were fine, would you just shrug your shoulders and forget the problem? or would you assume they don't want to be a burden despite everything going on and push for them to take care of things? if they say they are okay would you just leave it at that or would you call up a professional and set an appointment and tell them what time it's at?

sometimes we need to be our own parent.

i'm hoping for all the best

j00t · Jun 12, 2023

Lambourne said:
... Saying he was never going to be the same ever again...

when i was in early college i was going through a kind of minor emotional breakdown about some stuff i was dealing with. i randomly met up with an old teacher of mine that i really respected who happened to be a reverand that did a lot of family counseling. he said something that has stuck with me to this day.

when tragedy strikes, people always ask the same thing, "how do we get things back to how they were?" and the answer is, you can't. things can't EVER go back to the way they were. but they can be different. and different doesn't have to be worse. in plenty of cases, different can be better.

fris · Jun 12, 2023

damn dude, right in the feels

my girlfriend died of cancer back in february. we were only dating about a year and a half, i can't imagine how much harder it was for you.

KDow · Jun 13, 2023

So today is the day. We were only married 8 years but all in we were together for 17. I was skiddish over the whole marriage thing. I don't know why anymore but back then it felt like - why mess up such a great thing. Also she made me move from Boston to Rhode Island and turned my commute from 15 minutes living in a city that I loved to 1:45 each way on a good day in a city I hated. That ate up a few years. Once we moved to Maine everything changed.

I don't know what we'd be doing today if she never got sick and she was still here. Lunch maybe? Take the whole day off and day drink like the good old days? Maybe we'd be working like normal wrapped up in BS that didn't matter and we would have taken it for granted and just said happy anniversary with a kiss in the morning and had wine tonight? What I do know is I wouldn't be going to get forms notarized related to her death and having a meeting with my son at the children's grief counseling center. It would be anything but that.

Sometimes it feels like there's a reality out there where she's still here. Like a choose your own adventure and that version of us picked their way to the good ending. It feels so close you can almost touch it.

Similarly, today its one of those instances where something can feel like a lifetime ago and also just yesterday. I look at some of these pictures and videos and I swear it was just yesterday. We were just there. She was just here.

fris A year and a half or 30 years. It really sucks and I'm sorry you have to go through that.

Here are a few pictures from that day.

Rais · Jun 13, 2023

KDow said:
The other things which are tricky but to be expected. My daughter who is 95% potty trained (just needs a diaper at nap and overnight). Peed on the couch yesterday and then peed on the rug today - like 15 minutes after using the bathroom. My son at bed screamed every time I'd shut the door and freak out because he couldn't see me (his words). Thats what I was getting at with him finally starting to understand that mom is gone gone. I was in and out what felt like a million times. I didn't want to sleep in there because of the slippery slope that can be and because I had to clean toddler piss out of the carpet.

Although it took me way too long to read through it due to feels I wanted to toss a bone your way on this.
My son is 3 1/2. We started to potty train him 2 weeks before we moved outside the Chicago area. The first week was rough. We pretty much let him run around nude with a "potty watch" from Amazon. Every 30 mins it would play a short song and that was their notice to at least go try. He pissed and pooped on the floor the first 2 days, but then he got excited that the watch played a song for him. We even gave him a jelly bean if he went potty. After 3 days he was going all by himself and had gotten to the point he shouts " IM GOING POO BE BACK!".

He also wouldn't sleep in his room. We had always shut his door in LA with a nightlight. He always hated the dark. So we started to Sleep train him again after moving he refused to sleep with the door shut. We came to an agreement I would leave a small light on and Ill keep the door open if he slept in his room. Giving him the deciding choices although both choices are the end result did the trick.

At the end of the day kids don't know what they are doing at that age. I really got clued in on that when he was 1 1/2. Made it easier, but it's never easy.

Having said all this and I'll echo what everyone else has said. Move to near family. The kids needs family to be around at some point. Most of all you. It will help you in more ways than one. Unfortinally I have thought of this situation happening to me or my wife and we've talked about it. Knowing once we are gone the focus should be the other and to enjoy their life and take care of the kid, even if it means remarrying at some point. My wife also told me to go all Punisher if someone does something to her, because of my son. Think of how your wife would want you to move forward. I'm sure she would have sorrow as well even thinking of it, but she loved/loves you and would want you to go on and be a happy family. You have to respect her thoughts. As much as some incels on here talk trash about women, they are a building block and do know us to our bones.

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Gavinmad · Jun 13, 2023

KDow said:
Here are a few pictures from that day.

She seems remarkably happy. I was trying to think up a dig in the general vein of 'who was she actually marrying that day' that wasn't too harsh for the grownup forum and the tone of the thread and came up empty.

I've seen plenty of wedding pics with brides in varying degrees of happiness but her happiness gauge looks to have been reading somewhere around 'plus ultra' that day.

Rod-138 · Jun 14, 2023

My neighbor just lost his wife a few months back, they were 37/38 and he’s raising a 3 and 6 yr old. Car accident for her.

His situation was clear as her family was from Singapore and his is Houston (we’re near New Orleans), he moved back to Houston to be near his mom and brothers.

He’s a petroleum engineer and Shell really hooked up a good deal to get him back on his feet, switching him to work from home optional and paying his moving expenses.

Some shitty stuff he’s shared, but may help you feel better if it happens to you, the 3 year old doesn’t really seem to even notice. He’s really beat up by that, and asks him things like when he’s getting a new mommy all the time. The 6 yr old is getting some counseling I think. Also they had no will and he had to buy out his kids on the house, weird Louisiana law! Get a will

All in all, this dude is an engineer through and through- super process oriented, and I think he’s getting by because he systematizes all the shit he has to do to get back on his feet.

So to summarize- make sure work knows just in case they want to be humans and help you out. Don’t get too beat up if the kids say crazy stuff. Get them around family so you can see the forest from the trees and make good decisions without all the weight on you 100% of the time.

KDow · Jun 14, 2023

Rod-138 said:
My neighbor just lost his wife a few months back, they were 37/38 and he’s raising a 3 and 6 yr old. Car accident for her.

His situation was clear as her family was from Singapore and his is Houston (we’re near New Orleans), he moved back to Houston to be near his mom and brothers.

He’s a petroleum engineer and Shell really hooked up a good deal to get him back on his feet, switching him to work from home optional and paying his moving expenses.

Some shitty stuff he’s shared, but may help you feel better if it happens to you, the 3 year old doesn’t really seem to even notice. He’s really beat up by that, and asks him things like when he’s getting a new mommy all the time. The 6 yr old is getting some counseling I think. Also they had no will and he had to buy out his kids on the house, weird Louisiana law! Get a will

All in all, this dude is an engineer through and through- super process oriented, and I think he’s getting by because he systematizes all the shit he has to do to get back on his feet.

So to summarize- make sure work knows just in case they want to be humans and help you out. Don’t get too beat up if the kids say crazy stuff. Get them around family so you can see the forest from the trees and make good decisions without all the weight on you 100% of the time.

Of all the shitty things the one thing we were both grateful for and I'm still grateful for is that we were still given the time to plan. Get our affairs in order. Put things in place for the future for our kids. I can't imagine what it's like for your neighbor. Just flicking a lightswitch and gone. My wife and I didn't leave much unsaid, and while I wish that last day I had done things differently - We were focused on trying to get in the car and on the road to make it to the clinical trial follow up in Boston, so my attitude was more firm "You can do it, we gotta go, the doctor's said you can push yourself more" and less caring than I think I'd usually be. We were still lucky to have had those conversations with each other before that day.

I have several times a day where it doesn't seem real she's gone. For your neighbor it must be unfathomable.

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