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Feeling guilty, so much time has passed


Mars

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Today is the 7 year anniversary of my brother's death. Every year I have gone to where his car crashed and stayed for the ten minutes it took that year for another car to pass. 
This year.. I looked through some pictures before I went and realized I didn't know him anymore. I've seen his face so many times and I knew it, but tonight I felt like I was looking at this person for the first time. Like he was a stranger. I guess he is at this point, anything I ever knew about him, it's not current it's...
I guess what I'm getting at is that I feel guilty that he feels like only part of my past now. Also that I think I've reached a point in my grief journey where I'm okay not holding onto him so tightly, but I feel guilty about that too. I don't know how to deal with this. Is this even a normal part of grief? Has anyone ever gone through this before?

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Hi Mars,

 

I have not felt guilty when my thoughts and my grieving changed, but I have a specific reason why.

 

Twenty years ago, my mother lost her brother, my Uncle.  Years after that, she told me that one day a couple years after he died, she realized she hadn't thought of him all day long.  She told me she felt terrible guilt over that.

 

When my sister died, because of what my mother told me years earlier, I already knew that this was a potential, so I made a deal with myself.  I told myself that if the day ever comes that I don't think about her, that it was ok and that I didn't have to feel guilty because it was natural.  I didn't believe it would ever come, but it has and it was ok.

 

Everyone's grieving takes an individual course but all of it is normal.  I have 3 other sisters and each of them still have a memorial up in their homes for both my sister that died and my father.  I took down the memorial I had up about a year into my grieving for my sister and didn't put one up for my father.  Through the process of my grieving, I realized that for me and for my own sanity, I had to find my peace with what I had in my heart for my sister and not the physical reminders of her.

 

Some of my most difficult times has been understanding that they won't be travelling through this life with me anymore.  The first time I moved was horrible because my sister would never see my new place.  However we experience it, their physical participation in our lives ended on that day; they are, truly, in our past and that is sometimes an extremely hard part to reconcile.  I didn't feel bad the next time I moved.  I noticed the difference and it was open to me to feel guilt about not feeling bad but I had already made that deal with myself about not feeling guilt

 

People feel guilt through all aspects of grief.  Guilt to even be happy again.  Having guilt over what you're experiencing is absolutely natural.

 

Guilt happens when we feel like we should be feeling, thinking or acting in a different way, whether it is justified or not.  Not just within grief, but all guilt.  If it were me and I was feeling guilt, I would search my emotions to learn, "what is it that I feel like I should be feeling or be doing?"  And once I understood what I thought I should be feeling or doing, I would find some compromise within myself that would honour both what I thought I should be doing and moving it towards a healthy feeling of what I actually was doing and what felt right.

 

I'm not actually speaking very well this morning so I truly hope you've understood some of that.  I guess I just hope that I can express that yes, it is normal and that how you deal with it is to be gentle with yourself; in this and in all other phases and forms of our grief, this is the most important part.

 

<3

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