Eira, I won't softsoap this - it's going to be hell on earth for you this year. You'll wonder how you're going to get through each day - but somehow you will. You'll be on the floor with grief, and rage, and desperation and disbelief.
Slowly, incredibly, incredibly slow, a kind of 'ice' seems to form under your feet, so that you are no longer drowning in that freezing sea of grief. A kind of numbness nets around you, and you start to welcome it, as it stops you feeling quite so much. Little by little, day by day, that increases. Until the time will come when 'most days' you aren't 'too bad'. You will still plunge right down into the freezing sea again, quite regularly, and often unexpectedly - you'll see a photo, have a thought, a memory, someone will say something, and down, down, down you'll go.
You adjust. You never heal. You adjust. My MIL said to me on the day my husband died (she'd lost her own husband over twenty years earlier herself) simply 'You'll get used to it'. It sounded so brutal, but it is true. We become 'someone else'. We become 'a single woman'. We become 'a widow'.
The pain fades .....mostly. But we are never healed, never. But the scar tissue becomes less and less painful.
We find 'little joys' in 'little things'. A sunny day, a good meal, something nice on the TV, a glass of wine (not too many!)(though my MIL took to the gin when she was bereaved for the first year - it was a necessary anesthetic for her....)
As for his things, well, I can admit that seven years on my husband's wardrobe is quite untouched (apart form me putting more things in there of his!). I see no rush to get rid of anything of his. His study is still the same - pretty dusty! His ashes are on the shelf, just above the chair he sat in at the desk he worked at. I go in daily to have my 'chat' with him.
'One day' I'll sort things, but 'not right now'.
So if you do want to delay or keep things, it's up to you, what you want to do. My MIL had her husband's stuff packed up and out of the flat in a week -that's what she wanted. I'm the utter opposite. Neither is right or wrong, just what feels right for you.
There is no timetable for grieving. It is a landscape all of its own.
In terms of bereavement counselling, have you asked if your local hospice organisation does it? Mine did, and it really helped. Let me pour it all out, and I could say anything at all.
There are online widows and widowers' groups. You might try WAY UP (Widowed and Young, but for the over 50s). I found them helpful. Some of the focus is on 'keeping your life going' (and recovering a shared social life) but there is a separate section for the newly-widowed, where we can 'bleed' together......
