Good Morning Everyone: My name is Johnny and I lost my wife of 22 years on November 21, 2025 after a brave battle over several years with heart failure. I am new here, and actually wanted to start posting here as a means to give my exhausted small circle of support a break from my numerous texts that I send when I cannot do anything but cry and the lonely house starts to cave in on me or the TV shows become touchstones of a life me and Shalane spent together laughing at or making comments about together. I look to my left to talk to a chair that will now be forever empty of Shalane's presence, and then I look inward at a caregiver who should have done more to save her, and the guilt just boils up from deep inside and I do not have the skills to navigate it. I try to do things to keep busy and promote Shalane's memory like bringing her degree that she was so proud of into the living room and putting it on the living room wall along with her graduation pictures, I am planning on bringing her Patrick Nagel prints in there too that we archived and said we would hang "someday". But, in between the busy-ness , it all comes down to the fact that my wife will never talk to me again or laugh at my dumb comments or tell me to be careful at work or text me during the day to ask e when I am coming home or text me the latest news she heard or text a video of the Savannah Bananas dancing to try to cheer me up or eat dinner with me or argue sometimes with me about dumb things neither of us cared about and always laughed about later. The home is now a house in a trust for the kids to decide on later, there is no heartbeat in the house any longer, it is me crying and playing with our cat that is also grieving. The Emptiness will not go away. The therapist Isee every Monday says I am going through normal progression (I call it regression) and she does not seem to worry too much about me. The family doctor (who was also Shalane's family Dr.) tells me that Shalane was struggling and was tired and that's I should not feel guilty for my efforts and that I was doing a good job and that she could SEE how much I loved Shalane and how much Shalane loved me. In the weeks leading up to Shalane's death I could see she was getting sicker, and I would ask often for Shalane to let me take her to the ER where we could get some better help, but Shalane hated the hospital and told me she was feeling better after stopping taking a supplement and "to give it awhile". Then she started to not be able to walk well, and she would not eat. I told Shalane I thought her TAVR aortic replacement valve was not functioning well as when I looked up the symptoms she was showing most of them. She still refused to go. Then one afternoon she really started not being well, so I called the ambulance, I told her she had to go. It was too late by then, her kidneys had failed and despite all sorts of dialysis and vasopressors and everything the hospital could do over three days, Shalane drifted away and was gone. I stopped the code blue protocol 10 minutes in because I knew even if she was revived she would not live well and would most likely be intubated and on life support. I am wracked with guilt over everything. Why did I not call the ambulance sooner even though she begged me not too? Why did I stop the code blue protocols so soon? Why am I still alive and she is gone? I hate the way this all happened, and despite what everyone is telling me it is eating me alive and I do not know how I am going to navigate any of this. Group therapy starts next month, maybe I can find peace through sharing that way. In the meantime I will try writing and reading your threads here and maybe we can help each other. May Shalane's Memory Be A Blessing.
