Thread: Hug your loved ones, and often

Hi Bill...I'm not sure if you would have been active when I posted something very similar to you in August last year. My fiance Simon took his life on the 28th and my life turned upside down. I was also too late to revive him though the circumstances were slightly different. Reading this has brought back the rawness of the pain I felt then... no words will do justice to explaining right now but I do feel for you and if I could hug you I would. It's an awful experience and it takes time to heal. Let yourself be angry. Let yourself be hurt. Don't question yourself and how you behaved or torture yourself with 'what if'. Know you loved her with all you had. I don't know if this will help at all but something I told myself many times and still do now when it hurts is that he wasn't the man I loved in the final minutes. The man I loved had already gone. The man I loved had been suffocated with the darkness that mental illness brings and he couldn't see out and he couldn't stop. He wasn't trying to hurt me or my son, he was trying to escape the pain...It can be easy to forget the good times. Try and focus on them, let yourself laugh and smile and always let yourself cry. If I can help in anyway, please contact me. The support from the men and women on this site was phenomenal when I was in your shoes and I know that you will have people around you helping to hold you up.

Stay strong and take it one day at a time

Originally Posted by Land Rover Widow

Hi Bill...I'm not sure if you would have been active when I posted something very similar to you in August last year. My fiance Simon took his life on the 28th and my life turned upside down. I was also too late to revive him though the circumstances were slightly different. Reading this has brought back the rawness of the pain I felt then... no words will do justice to explaining right now but I do feel for you and if I could hug you I would. It's an awful experience and it takes time to heal. Let yourself be angry. Let yourself be hurt. Don't question yourself and how you behaved or torture yourself with 'what if'. Know you loved her with all you had. I don't know if this will help at all but something I told myself many times and still do now when it hurts is that he wasn't the man I loved in the final minutes. The man I loved had already gone. The man I loved had been suffocated with the darkness that mental illness brings and he couldn't see out and he couldn't stop. He wasn't trying to hurt me or my son, he was trying to escape the pain...It can be easy to forget the good times. Try and focus on them, let yourself laugh and smile and always let yourself cry. If I can help in anyway, please contact me. The support from the men and women on this site was phenomenal when I was in your shoes and I know that you will have people around you helping to hold you up.

Stay strong and take it one day at a time

Thank you very much for this post. I'm sorry I couldn't find your name in your profile. Yes I was active on the forum when you experienced your personal tragedy, and your sad story broke my heart. I regret I couldn't offer any words of comfort as I was recovering from my wifes previous attempt and I always knew in the back of my mind that this time would come. all I could offer to you at that time was the 'thanks' key.Please accept my belated condolences to you and yours.
I have indeed gone through a whole range of different emotions in the past week. I'm currently going through the angry phase because the farewell letters that were found, after being translated from Vietnamese to English didn't provide the answers or reasons that I was hoping they would, and generally didn't make much sense anyway. I'm generally an Aethiest, Agnostic at best,and I don't drink or take drugs, but a couple of days ago when I visited the tree, I felt and saw what I thought was a difficult to explain energy force in that location. When I returned home late last night after a family meeting and after reading the farewell letter I gave my wifes photos such an angry paying out that if that energy force was real it would have got such a fright as to have shot through at 100mph.I hope it returns when I've settled down a little.
Bill.

Hi Bill, like newhue (Jason) in his post above I also visited this post a couple of days ago.. I spent some time (in tears) trying to compose a reply but was unable to find the words to explain how much your post affected me..

and again like newhue I find my self sitting here with tears in my eye's still searching for those words that I know I will never find.. because words just don't cut it..

The words you used to stress how important it is to not take for granted our loved ones and to show that love will not be forgotten by many people; and I for one will always treasure the time that I have with my precious family and friends.. life is too short and too unpredictable to do otherwise..

I don't know you Bill but I was saddened to read that you worried that is you had of shown more affection etc that things would have been different... I have lost a dear friend who suffered with severe depression and have another close friend (also with depression) that has attempted suicide several times; and after talking and supporting her over the years I truly believe that no it would not have made a difference.. Land Rover Widow said it far more eloquently that I ever could when she said "The man I loved had been suffocated with the darkness that mental illness brings and he couldn't see out and he couldn't stop".. (and once again I find myself bawling).. I guess what I am trying to say is that it's obvious that you loved your wife with all your heart and I think she knew that.. please don't blame yourself.. instead together with your step daughter try to focus on the good times and the love that you shared... *many hugs*..

I'm sorry Bill I only got half way through your first post initially when I was reading it out to Ian and I could not continue on as I was starting to cry. it has taken me until now to come back to this thread.

I came back because I really wanted to give you my condolences. I could not even imagine the pain of losing a loved one naturally let alone losing one so tragically.

my heart goes out to you and all those people that have had or are having the dark battle with depression

Originally Posted by wagoo

Thank you very much for this post. I'm sorry I couldn't find your name in your profile. Yes I was active on the forum when you experienced your personal tragedy, and your sad story broke my heart. I regret I couldn't offer any words of comfort as I was recovering from my wifes previous attempt and I always knew in the back of my mind that this time would come. all I could offer to you at that time was the 'thanks' key.Please accept my belated condolences to you and yours.
I have indeed gone through a whole range of different emotions in the past week. I'm currently going through the angry phase because the farewell letters that were found, after being translated from Vietnamese to English didn't provide the answers or reasons that I was hoping they would, and generally didn't make much sense anyway. I'm generally an Aethiest, Agnostic at best,and I don't drink or take drugs, but a couple of days ago when I visited the tree, I felt and saw what I thought was a difficult to explain energy force in that location. When I returned home late last night after a family meeting and after reading the farewell letter I gave my wifes photos such an angry paying out that if that energy force was real it would have got such a fright as to have shot through at 100mph.I hope it returns when I've settled down a little.
Bill.

I know what you mean about knowing the time would come. When I drove to find Simon I kept thinking I had to go to the police to report him missing. I already knew even though I didn't have any real reason to think it at that time. I remember saying to the ambulance officers (first on the scene) that I wasn't surprised. Very sad, but not surprised. Part of me always knew it could happen and part of me always expected it. Thanks for your condolences. The months that have passed have been kind to me. Life is a lot easier now than it was in those first few months. I won't lie, it's still hard and I still find myself in tears here and there. But the constant thoughts of him have faded a little and I have more space in my thoughts...if that makes sense. I am sure she is with you...I was raised catholic but will admit to being skeptical and openly questioning of religion in general. But after he passed I definitely felt him around. Oh and my name is Sarah, I always forget to end with that! If you want to talk, at any time please let me know. I also know of an online community for widows that I joined. I didn't post that often but it helped reading others journeys and seeing what others who lost through suicide went through over the months that followed the death.

Thanks once again Sara and all othe contributors to this thread. I wish you, I and and all the others that shared their similar experiences of tragic loss with me here could suddenly wake up a find it was just a bad dream.
Alas they weren't dreams but the kind heartfelt words of encouragement from all has helped me enormously. Thankyou once again to all.

I hope to personally get back to regular programming on the forum asap.
That means my usual bagging of every model LandRover/RangeRover ever made, getting involved in sometimes heated arguments over the relative merits of traction control verses difflocks etc and occasionally giving technical advice to questions and problems whenever I feel sufficiently qualified to do so. I love the banter and don't bare any malice to any of those I occasionally sparred with.
I really am a LandRover enthusiast, Honest
Regards, Bill.

Bill, you might not know this but ever since I got my first Rangie almost 10 years ago, I have looked up to you as a genuine good honest person, with a great knowledge of land rovers and the mechanical workings that happen within them every day. If I see an article with a vehicle you have had any form of input into, I have read it, saved pictures, and videos (the 6x6 vids are still in my collection).

Why have I told you this now... well I decided that instead of my condolences, I would take your advice from your initial post, and cut the macho bull****.

In my eyes your a legend and I am pained to learn of your loss, I lost a mate a couple of years ago and every now and then I get a painful reminder of the fact I wont be able to share a beer with him in person for a long time. But it's not my pain that saddens me, it's the thought that others have to bear this pain, and the fact that they have to bear it often.

I struggle to make this post, but I must, please be assured that help, or a freindly voice is just a call, SMS or PM away. Your still a land rover legend to me, even more so today!

Hi Bill, I am so, so sorry to hear of your loss. My and my family's hearts go out to you, your family, you wife's family and all your collective friends. Sara's words ring so true. Way back in 1990 my 22 year old brother took his own life with my father's pistol that he only used for a sports gun club. My father beat himself up so much for so long for having that gun. As Sara said, blaming yourself and asking all the what ifs in the world will do absolutely no good to you and our family and in no way did anything you've done or not done contribute to the situation.

I remember when my brother died the sense of overwhelming shock that went right through not only my immediate family, and obviously all our relatives but all my brother's friends who were shaken to the core. Usually people don't think about the friends and how it affects their lives.

I remember my father crying himself to sleep for countless nights and my mother living in a stunned stupor bordering on depression (which she has suffered from on and off for life). My mother describes her life as being in two parts; one when my brother was alive and the other since he died.

People express their condolences in various ways, some well and others not so well and they usually struggle to explain their sincerity and true feelings but they all mean well.
Suicide is such an alien act to those of us who don't suffer any form of depression that when we're the ones left behind we're constantly asking "why, why, why" and saying things like " if only I'd done this or that" and we are consumed by feelings of guilt for not seeing the signs that so called experts tell us are obvious but are invisible to those who are closest to the victim. We feel guilty that our loved one was in more pain than we realised or we didn't even recognise, but it's not our fault. We feel guilty for laughing so soon after the event and then slip back into despair. We go up and down, high and low and every high brings a feeling of guilt.

We see others the same age as our loved one laughing and enjoying life and think how the world still rolls on and no one but us misses them; what's the point in it all? what's the meaning of life? Material possessions mean absolutely nothing.
We don't understand the logic that drives suicide and often don't want to listen to words of comfort some may want to offer, especially when those words come from neighbours or acquaintances who were not really that close to us which reminds me of a woman who came to speak to my mother just after my brother died. She was a distant neighbour, a "nod" or "tip of the hat as you pass" type of person. My mother didn't want to see her and thought she was just being nosy but she told my mother how she herself had tried suicide some years earlier. Her logic (and Bill, I apologise if this is offensive or causes upset) was that if she died every one would be better off, so in effect she saw her actions as being for the better good and that gave my mother some small comfort that my brother was thinking of others. I don't really know what else to say other than having been close to your situation, I really do empathize with your situation and offer my most sincere condolences.
regards Gerald