death guilt

from i'm grieving as fast as i can by linda feinberg

"in the beginning, you feel that if you were to stop thinking about or talking about the person who died it would seem as though the person never existed, that the person would be forgotten, and that the person lived for nothing. because of this, in the early weeks after a death, you really do not want to feel better. you want to hold onto your grief. you resent the weeks going by, because each week takes you further away from the person you loved and still love."

"fifty percent of grief is missing the person who died. . . the other fifty percent of grief is missing your former carefree self, who did not know such emotional pain existed."

"you have lost your best friend, your lover, your confidante, your advisor and your companion. 'i have lost the one person i could be totally honest with.' . . you have lost your ally, your protector, your person to nurture. 'i am no longer the most important person in the world to anyone.'"

"you used to enjoy shopping for food and preparing special meals. now the supermarket is one enormous reminder of the person you loved."

"death guilt, the guilt that comes with death, is composed of many different elements. you may feel guilty if the person you loved was dying a slow death and you wished the person would hurry up and get it over with. you desperately wanted to get on with your life and you were sick of all the visits to the hospital. you may feel guilty that you fought when he was sick because you were both so stressed out and exhausted. you may feel guilty that while you were visiting your loved one in the hospital, you would really rather have run away and taken a vacation. you couldn't take a vacation because it was only proper for you to go to the hospital. you may feel guilty for thinking that you were glad it wasn't you that was dying.

you may feel death guilt for being unwilling or unable to take care of the person at home. you may feel guilt at being unable to keep the person alive. you may wish you knew how to do cpr or wish that you had gone to medical school.

you may feel guilty for being unable to cure him or to end his pain. you may take this literally and feel guilty if you were unable or unwilling to perform a mercy killing, especially if it was requested by the dying person.

you may feel guilty even if you do help the sick person end the pain. a young doctor shared with me that when his mother was dying of cancer, she asked him to give her an overdose of drugs so she would die. he refused. his mother then asked his sister to do it. his sister was not a professional medical person but somehow obtained enough drugs to help her mother die. on the year anniversary of her mother's death, his sister committed suicide.

you may feel guilty for feeling relieved that he is dead and the problem is over. you may feel guilty when you begin to accept your loss and your grief becomes less intense. you may feel guilty for smiling or laughing after a death. you may feel profound guilt if you are truly glad and grateful the person is dead because you were not overly fond of the person anyway.

you may feel guilty that you were jealous of all the attention your spouse got from friends, family and hospital staff while he was sick and dying. everyone kept telling him how great he was and how much they loved him, and all he did was lay there. you were the one that was doing everything and nobody paid any attention to you. so what if it sounds a bit crazy to be jealous of a sick and dying person? feelings are not rational. it's okay to be jealous and it's okay to feel guilty."

"grief is a battle between your conscious mind and your unconscious mind. what makes grief so painful is that much of the grief process is unconscious and therefore not under your conscious control. you have your good days and bad days, and you cannot control which is which.

your unconscious is that part of your brain which remembers every detail of your life that your conscious mind has long forgotten. your unconscious controls your dreams. your unconscious drives your car for you, while you are imagining you are somewhere else. it tells you when it's time to get off the bus, while you are daydreaming. it reminds you it's your friend's birthday tomorrow, when you weren't even thinking about your friend.

your conscious mind is your thought process in the here and now, that is under your control. it knows your husband died. you attended a funeral and went to a cemetery. the problem is your unconscious does not want to believe it. so it creates a psychological defense mechanism called denial, to protect itself. your unconscious is also confused. 'my husband is dead, but i still feel married. i still have the house in the suburbs, the children, the dog and the station wagon. all that is missing is my husband.' just because someone dies, the relationship does not end. it just changes. if you were once a wife, who are you now? your unconscious is trying to spare you from the shocking reality all at once. so it allows you to absorb the effects of your loss only a little at a time.

there are really only two stages of grief. the first stage is shock and denial and the second stage is acceptance. there is a free-for-all in the middle and a long way to go. until your unconscious mind catches up to your conscious mind, you will be in the denial stage. you know you are in denial when the phone rings and you think it might be your husband. . .

the person you loved was more than just a human being. he was a habit to whom you were addicted - emotionally, physically, and chemically."

"some people feel so out of control when somebody dies that their unconscious creates a protective mechanism called denial which may give them a false sense of control. if this were to happen to you, you might be puzzled to find yourself feeling 'high' after the death. this is an extreme form of anxiety. you may find yourself continually racing around, constantly visiting friends, compulsively shopping.

some people are so busy after someone dies that they just don't have time to grieve. after a few months, the legal papers may all be headed in the right direction and you will be able to take the time to sit, think, and grieve. lucy refused to sit and think and feel until two years after her husband died. then she crashed and suffered what is called a delayed grief reaction. . .

some people can't cry after a death. for some, the death doesn't seem real. others cannot cry because there is too much crying around them. they feel they would be in some sort of crying competition if they let go. some people can't cry because the loss is psychologically complicated with ambivalent feelings of love and hate toward the person who died. others cannot cry because they are trying to support everyone around them. others are afraid to cry for fear they will be unable to stop."