Hello @georgette12 I'm Scott and while I hurt over the feelings you express in your post, I am pleased to see you here on Mayo Connect talking about the difficulties we each feel as we struggle with loss, grief, and often gulit.

My situation is a bit different in that I was the caregiver for my wife during her 14+ year war with brain cancer. She has been dead for two years now, but I still grieve and I still feel intense feelings of loss. I have always believed grief is just a different extention of love -- if we hadn't loved we wouldn't feel the grief we do. I also believe the grieving process is as unique to each of us as was the person we grieve and the love we feel for them. There is no formula and personally I find the stages of grief thing folks trot out often to be just one person's view of grief. Once I threw that book in the trash and allowed myself to grieve in my own way, as the right way for me, did I begin to feel less guilt!

I still have feelings of guilt over things I did, didn't do, or said when my wife was sick. However the deepest guilt I feel is from her final weeks when she would beg me to help her and there was nothing I could do. It wracked me then and it still does to this day. I cannot think of those times and feelings without crying,

We were married for 41 years so there is no way I can avoid triggers for my feelings of loss. She designed the home I am in now, but was striken when we were only in the home for two weeks. I try my best to embrace my memories, painful though some are, of her in my life. We cannot just excise someone from our mind who was an important part of it -- as I am sure your son was. It is not easy!

I have many people ask when I am going to leave our house, but I have no desire to at all. Funny, when my wife was alive and I would go to work, run an errand, etc. and I would come in the door she always loved for me to say loudly, in my best Desi Arnez voice, "Lucy, I'm home!" I just went to the grocery yesterday and said it the moment I came in the door. I guess I'd have to say that one is bittersweet, but I keep doing it.

Not for everyone, but I also have kept certain things in our home the same from before she left us. The attached photos is of one of them. My wife was a smoker and called our garage her 'smoking lanai'. When she went out she always put on one of my old dress shirts and a cap. She did it from day 1 in our home and then always hung them on the newel post. They are still there today -- because it would be worse for me if they weren't.

I am here and as you can tell love to 'chat' as do so many others here in the Connect community.

Strength, courage, and peace!