What a great great thread, filled with wisdom and actual help. I'm so glad you managed to have a real good talk with DH, Kittylady!
My husband is dead, for nearly four years, and I know it would be so much help to me if I could talk to him. My son won't talk, daughter-in-law just echos anything son does or thinks or says. No other relatives except two grandsons, ten and 7, who are smart but without life experience in the things we are talking about.
My only talk help lately has been a young woman priest, half my age, at the Episcopal church. She and I seem to have had very similar experiences. She deals a lot with illness, too, her mother's undiagnosable (even at Mayo) disease, her own illnesses, her children's illnesses. I will, I fear, become dependent on her--and she is not my daughter or anyone who owes me help. But for now, she is what I have. And she is a gift. So for now, hallelujah that she is there.

I had a counselor and she was good to vent to after Irv died, but now our conversations come at life from totally different points of view.
She is much closer in age to me than "Mother A". but her "answers" are not mine. I find I have already tried everything she suggests, and found them no longer helpful.