Life After

Going on nine months now since the loss of my DW last August, 2025. It is a life I never wanted, feared ever having to live and hate every minute of every day without her. I knew that this disease scares many people and leaves them uncomfortable in the presence of one in the latter stages especially. I saw it with others. As so many have shared, the outpouring of sympathy at the end was there, but fairly quickly dissolved afterwards. I also had no desire to engage with others in light social activities without my DW or have light hearted social chit chat. Recently however I decided to try to make contact with a few friends with whom we were very close before my DW got worse. Now I better see the difficulty of trying to reenter life with those same people. Conversations are strained, not uncaring, just strained and in short order clearly grows uncomfortable for them. I respect that I now make them uneasy about what to say, how to have meaningful conversation. I don't think there will be much continuing contact. Acknowledging that years passed where we had little if any communication and no presence, I guess I thought it might be possible to renew some remnant of the old life with them. Now, I am much less confident. I am now an uncomfortable reminder of the before life, my DW and the horror of this disease to so many. I feel that I will need to find opportunities to establish new friends who do not have our past life a part of any upcoming friendship. I accept that I am now a different person. I did not plan it or want to be a different person but I accept that I am. Life after is proving a challenge, burdensome, sad, and is going to be very difficult to build alone. I do not want a new "relationship". Friendship, occasional simple social interaction, having another live human to just talk with easily might be all that is needed.