Yet another widow

Today is the first anniversary of the worst day of my life. May 2017 It's not the day Roz died. That wouldn't arrive till the 2nd July. It was the day she sank into what was essentially a diabetic coma.  The day I realised I could never talk to her again. My Rozzie had left me. Only her shell remained. ...and it had all happened much quicker than anyone predicted. After fourteen months of slow tumour growth Roz's body had essentially given up in June and the tumours grew at a much more aggressive rate. After being confined to her liver, they were now in her lungs and lymph nodes. On the 24th June we were informed that she had about three weeks to live. While the number of weeks was a bit of a shock, the fact that this was now officially terminal was not. Roz had rapidly deteriorated over the course of June and we were waiting for this shoe to finally drop. In a way it was a bit of a relief. We had held off informing others until we had an official diagnosis and timescale so...

I'm sitting at my desk about to have another panic attack. It's been three weeks since Roz passed away and I can feel myself start to hyperventilate and my heart start to pound.  I get up and go to one of the small meeting rooms, darken the lights, curl up in the chair and try to relax.  It's at this point I realise - I need help. I had already discussed the extreme highs and lows I'd been having in the very early stages of widowhood with one of the hospice counsellors. She had been very helpful and told me this was perfectly natural for the first three months and that it would even out after that. She also recommended I hold off having counselling until after that period was over. I realise now though that I cannot wait that long for support. I google "How to cope with grief" and stumble upon a site that lists some support groups. There I see Widowed and Young. They seem to be exactly what I'm looking for and I apply for membership. A few days later my me...

On this day last year I was watching Liverpool win their sixth European Cup. I was sat in a holiday lodge in Somerset watching on my tablet while Roz slept in the bed a few feet away from me. She had driven us down to Somerset that afternoon, was on very strong antibiotics and totally exhausted. Between Saturday and Tuesday, when we left, she probably slept for around forty hours. Her exhaustion had been brought on by a round of new, supposedly more gentle chemo tablets that caused such an anaemic reaction that it almost killed her. After a week in hospital with two large plasma injections - oil changes as she referred to them - she was able to leave and we were able to go on a small holiday. So there I was, watching my beloved Liverpool play a sloppy, boring game of football for the greatest prize in the world - a prize they had gotten so close to reaching the year before - and I didn't really care.  In 2005, after watching the Miracle in Istanbul, I sat in total elation and disbe...