Saddest/Toughest Day of your life?

I get it, but it's wonderful that you co-parent and stay friends...

Mick D, I too am very sorry for your loss. I have a 15 year old boy and cannot begin to imagine the impact of your loss. In fact, I worry about that type of stuff and I'm always talking to by boy about staying safe and not doing stuff that can result in harming himself. However, I never heard of the "Choking Game" but I will certainly take your advice, educate myself and speak to my son about this subject.

You and your wife must be very strong individuals to get through that saddest day....

let her R.I.P, try to remember only the good and forgive yourself for leaving her. There are support groups if you need support. Best wishes Athens marathoner

Do you suppose the saddest day of her life was when you told her you were gay??

This thread is nuts! It's a train wreck that I can't stop watching!

Good luck to you all. I'm 34 and somehow have lived a very easy life with no terrible phone calls or news. I can't imagine going through what some of you people have. Hell, I can't even imagine my dog kicking the bucket.

Good luck in the future and thanks for giving me some perspective. This thread just confirms that friends and family are everything. The rest is minor details.

I've never been so certain of anything. My original post didn't represent my saddest/toughest day ever, but served as catalyst to me posting and asking about others. The saddest day of both of our lives was the day she found out and we sat on the couch crying with agony, knowing that there was absolutely no way to save our marriage. Later that day, I had to walk into my father's house with a white Gladlock bag of my clothes and explain to him that I was gay while asking him to let me stay for a while. My wife and I spoke on the phone for 2 hours that night, trying to begin the process of letting go, trying to make it real. We went through all the steps of a couple that would normally reconcile because they are still in love, but of course, that could never happen. THAT was the toughest and saddest day of my life.

de la muerte wrote:

My thoughts go out to everyone that has contributed to this thread. Especially the story of the two guys with wifes that were diagnosed with HD.

You both mentioned having to deal with massive guilt. Have you thought about group therapy? There might be groups out there for helping relative/friends of persons diagnosed with HD

Your thoughts are appreciated. It was 12 yrs ago that my 1st wife died, so the anguish has diminished. I did in fact try group therapy for a few mos afterward, but found it unhelpful (too many others dominating the discussion).

During her HD, I recall my mother and a friend admonishing me to force her to get treated, as i could be charged w/ neglect, or something similar. Finally, i wrote a long, descriptive email to a Public Health official in the town i lived in; he contacted me immediately and directed me to the in-home evaluation, and the rest is history.

In a weird way, i feel like that health official saved my life, as i was turning suicidal.

god bless all of you and i hope each of you finds peace from whatever your sad day was.

Mike

Some years ago, I was working in the administrative ranks at a large medical center, and I got a call from security that some adult was waiting by the morgue to identify someone.

It turned out that he was supposed to be at the county morgue, which was down the street. I accompanied him to that location.

We went inside together to view a body. The attendant led us both back to the end of a walkway, and we turned to face a window shrouded by a curtain.

The attendant pulled back the curtain. A young boy lay dead on a table. It was the man's son.

He grabbed my arm and crumpled to the floor and sobbed.

I felt so bad for him, and I do so today.

This thread is turning out to be one of the best I have seen on LR in some time.

While I have not had that many truly sad days in my life, there are a couple that stick out.

I sympathize with the poster who said getting laid off from his job. I had been married for 3 months when I got laid off from my job. I had been with the company about 10 months and had NO idea it was coming at all. It was a smaller company and I remember going into the office and about an hour later, out of the blue, my boss calls me in the office and lets me know that since my coworker and I were the last two in, we were the first two they were laying off. It was like getting kicked in the gut multiple times over and over again. I broke down on the way home, on the side of the interstate. I had to call my wife and tell her what happened. I remember thinking, "I am 27, college educated, married for 3 months and don't have a job. What kind of man am I?"

The second one happened a few years before when I found out that my own sister stole my fiancee's (now wife) credit card number and charged over $1,000 on it. We were visiting my parents for a few days and my sister snuck into the room when we were out and took the number to pay her cell phone bill. My (now) wife later told me that she just wished a complete stranger had done it because of the stress that it put me and her thru. The worst part was that, when confronted, my sister lied to my wife's face and told her that "you said it was okay if I used your credit card." To this day, my wife still refuses to acknowledge my sister.

Honestly, all trivial compared to some of the stuff that has been posted prior on here. I wish you all the best.

No need to downplay your story. That is an awful phonecall to have to take and I can't imagine your pain. My girlfriend recently spent some time abroad and this was one of my biggest fears.

I just read each post. Sort of a “marathon” in it’s own way, right? My heart aches for the genuine posters. Not to diminish anyone’s feelings but I am especially sensitive to those who have lost a child like mickd, or someone like athens and bauhaus. And to all who have lost a loved one. There are so many stories that have been heart retching that have affected me in the most emotional way.

Most of my family and friends would say I am a tough guy but this thread has reduced me to tears for a number of reasons. I have been through numerous physical and emotional pain situations over my 59 years but have now become a “baby” reading about some of your toughest/saddest days. I salute all of you who have been able to share some very private thoughts and feelings. It’s not easy talking about your “shit” and who wants to listen anyway, right?

Please allow me to share a few stories with you. I’ll try to be as clear and concise as possible.

At the time, my mom dying in my arms from lung cancer under very unpleasant physical circumstances was the saddest/toughest day of my life. This was after my sister and I cared for her at home (where she wanted to die) after about 6 weeks, feeding her morphine, etc.

A few years after her death, my wife left me, taking my 2 girls. A few months after that, I was traveling and got a call from my wife that my youngest, age 13, was raped by a 20 year old “bad” (gang member) guy. Thereafter, she resorted to cutting, and then alcohol/drugs and unusual sexual behaviors. Here is where I need to shorten this story. After numerous rounds of therapy, we had to send her to boarding schools, wilderness camp, more boarding schools, and on and on. This was all during a very contentious divorce over 2.5 years, involving custody, lots of money, etc. In the meantime, the bad guy went to prison for 5 years on unrelated charges with the sexual assault charge on my daughter incorporated into the 5 years, even after 2 death threats were prosecuted. By this time, the bad guy knew who I was because I went to each hearing and was very involved in the case. At sentencing, I read the ‘impact statement’ and he had a few choice words for me. He gets released from prison in June for “good behavior.” From what I know, he will be paying me a visit. For some reason, he doesn’t scare me and I will be waiting for him. There is so much more to this story but this one now becomes the toughest “day” for me.

Luckily, I am still able to run. Like most of you, the run and all that it does to our mind and body is my “therapy.”

I was about to write my post, but deleted it because I felt too much pain.

very concerned wrote:

I was about to write my post, but deleted it because I felt too much pain.

Yes, it is VERY difficult to process "too much pain." My thoughts are that sharing with family/friends can help in this process. I hope you are able to ease the pain in some way (but not with drugs/alcohol). Perhaps posting anomalously might help in this regard?

Wishing you some relief.

Today actually became the saddest day of my life when I saw this was a thread on LetsRun.com

surprised nobody's mentioned 9/11 yet

My sister called me one evening and on the other end all I could hear was hysterical sobbing. Through her screaming I could finally make out the words "He's dead." She was referring to my nephew who was killed in Fallujah. At first I remained calm and told her to wait and that I was on my way to her house an hour away. As soon as I hung up the phone I slammed it into the wall over and over and over again in anger. I nearly broke my hand. When I made my way over there my sister was screaming at her husband because he had encouraged their son to join the Marines. After that night I couldn't stand seeing Bush on the TV and every time I see a young kid in the infantry I just want to give him a hug and never let him go.

Thanks again, and for the therapy advice. I've been in therapy since my ex-wife died--not group--and although the therapist is excellent, maybe it's the other people who've been though similar things, like bauhaus, that I need to listen to. When bauhaus wrote about things that are similar to what my wife and I went through, it really made a difference. For instance, I hated writing that my wife hit me. I felt like I was accusing her, and I was afraid that people who don't know about Huntington's might think I must have been doing things to "deserve" being attacked and screamed at, when I was spending most of my life trying to help her. I had no idea that she couldn't be helped, and neither did she. She was the valedictorian of both her high school and her college, although she didn't compete for grades--she was just a perfectionist and wanted to be good at her job. She she'd just gotten her first position in her field (physical therapy, ironically) when the Huntington's symptoms started, and the first sign was that she couldn't use her hands well and kept dropping and breaking things. People got irritated at her for being clumsy, when in fact she was a great athlete and could've done those things as well as anyone except for that f***ing disease. Sometimes I fantasize about going back to every person in the various places where we lived who thought she was weird or crazy or drunk (she walked awkwardly after a while and kept getting stopped by police who thought she was drunk or high) and tell them the true story. I do half-effective, half-self-destructive things like going on very long or very hard runs "for her," thinking that no pain from something like running can get close to what she went through. I have videos of her when we were together before anything bad happened, and I watch her in them to keep that part of her life alive in at least my memory. I usually cry when I see her. I don't know how to get out of that.

It's totally unexpected and strange to me that I'm talking about this on Letsrun, but I guess there's sense in it. When something really serious comes up on this board, almost all the juvenile nonsense and insults stop. There really is a community here. I'm very grateful for that right now. Thanks to Divorced Guy for starting the thread and to everyone who read all of this bad news. Very best wishes with getting through your own tough times. I hope that the "making you stronger" part has some validity at some point. Bauhaus seems pretty squared away, so maybe it really is just a matter of time.

While not on par with losing a loved one, I'll share my toughest day.

It was the day I finished packing up my stuff and going to spend my first night in my new apartment. My wife had told me she wanted a divorce a couple months earlier, and we had 2 children (ages 4 and 2). It wasn't the moving away from her part of the equation that bothered me - she had done a decent enough job of separating her life from mine over the previous year. But knowing how much my little kids lives were being impacted right before their eyes; yet they were too young to have any idea what was going on, really got to me.

She was moving out of the house too, but I finished my move first, and that night I drove away from the house and my kids (knowing I'd never see them on a full-time basis again, through no fault of my own) was terrible. I still vividly remember getting about 1.5 miles from the house and coming out of some thought process, and realizing I had only been driving for 2-3 minutes, and yet it seemed like a very long time had passed.

The next few days, weeks and months were very hard. Sometimes I would get choked up when I would see my kids for the first time in a couple days. And I would always get sad, choked up or even cry when I gave them back to their mother again. I knew eventually I would get used to the situation, and what bothered me the most was that very fact - I would get used to not being in my kids' lives every day. And that they would get used to not having me around every day. It was probably easier for them because of their young age, but that made it harder for me.

Still makes me sad thinking about those days and the times I've missed with my kids since then. I never knew how much I would love my kids until I had them. Pretty crazy. I do take some solace in them turning out so well (so far) 6 years later, and seeing how much they appreciate the time they do have with me. I'm not so sure it was the best idea for me to re-hash the experience, but maybe it helps someone else.

You definitely made me choke up a bit, but I truly think its beautiful that you are trying to keep her memory alive.