The Gift of Guilt

"I'll never get over my guilt," is a sentence I hear often from parents who have suffered the traumatic loss of a child (and all losses of children are traumatic - even if they are grown up when we lose them).

If we stay in this place of ruminating over our regrets and guilt, we are spared a bit from the acknowledgement of all our loss. Maybe it is easier to talk about our feelings of guilt than it is to live with the reality of all the things that will not happen now that they are gone.

It is all HARD. Guilt is crushing; mourning is like having heart surgery without anesthesia - every damn day.

But here's the thing - guilt is not really a gift unless it is true, legitimate wrongdoing - if that is true, then we know how to proceed: ask for forgiveness and make amends. However, it is usually not the whole story. Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for what we perceive we can (or should) control. Secondly, it is expensive. Unremitting, unresolved feelings of guilt steals the present moment. It takes us away from the living.

Guilt, the lying little bugger, tells us that it serves as a living tribute to the loss. But guilt really just keeps stealing from the living. Guilt asks us to keep dying for our dead - and that sounds noble, even preferable to our grief over another's passing.

But what if there is another way? What if we acknowledge the specifics of what we cannot undo that was 'wrong' and refuse the offering of a generalized guilty feeling with no legitimate claim to reality? We acknowledge our legitimate wrongdoing and seek forgiveness, make amends. If we find that some of the beliefs that we have held about our guilt are simply not true, then we must move forward. We live. We live to honor the lost. We live well for those among us, our other children, our family that is still present for us to love well.

These are not easy things nor are they appropriate first responses for someone new to grief. But if we find that our grief is interfering with our love for others - maybe it is time to re-evaluate the ways we have thought about our loss. Maybe we need a grief counselor or a grief group to help us reframe our habitual way of thinking about our suffering.

Maybe we need some support for healing.