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Guilt and grief-please reply


Healing2021

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Healing2021

I keep waking up early and the emotions hit me hard. We got my dads Ashe she the other day and that was a huge trigger. I felt like I did something wrong by letting them cremate him. When I saw him at the hospital, I had this intense urge to yell at the doctor and tell them they had to done enough. To come fix him. When I got his ashes, it almost felt the same. I was almost his caregiver, and he looked to me to help. He asked me for help when he wasn’t feeling well and I did everything I thought was right at that moment but I didn’t help him like he wanted. I keep going back and wondering what if I did this and what if I did that. If covid wasn’t around would I have taken him to a hospital? In the months leading to his heart attack, I would try to get him to stop smoking. I’d try to get him to eat better and we’d try walks. It felt like I had horribleness anxiety around losing him ever since covid started and sometimes I blame myself for that. I blame myself for quarantining him, wondering if I didn’t need do that would I have seen the heart attack sooner. His last day he spent alone in his room because of me. 

At night he was really hurting And I was up listening and checking on him. But it doesn’t feel like enough because it wasn’t enough. My brother said, “we shouldve just taken him to a hospital when he wasn’t feeling well”, and that triggered me a lot also. I just feel like this was my responsibility and I let him down. I’m not a doctor, I keep getting told. I did what I thought was right in the moment, I keep getting told.  But none of that seems right now. Now when I google things I see the symptoms. I was worried for months he was sick,but I thought it was just my own anxiety. I worried about him and my brother so much after all we’ve been through. 

 

I know now there are stages, and my loss just happened under a month ago. But it feels like the guilt stage is never ending. I want to believe that his is not my fault. I want to believe even if i had gotten him to a hospital it may not have turned out ok still. I want to believe there was nothing more I could could’ve done. That’s just impossible right now. My friends who supported me are now back to work, back to their lives where all their loved ones are living. And I’m here, crying, trying to reach out but everyone I see asleep to rest for their next day. This just sucks so bad. 

 

My dad wouldn’t want me blaming myself. He’d tell me not to worry, he always did tell me that. He’d tell me that we didn’t know. If I knew he was that I’ll, the entire day would’ve been different. The entire year would’ve been different. I guess sometimes I feel I can be in control of things I really am not in control of. Being the mom since I was 15, when my own mom died, probably has left me with some ideas that just aren’t true. I just feel like I spent the entire year anxious and scared to lose him. I didn’t hug him as much because I was working outside the house and didn’t want to expose him. I’d watch tv and eat dinner in my room instead of with him because I wanted that time but I always thought I should eat with him. I did, just not enough. Like I said, I’m told no matter what it would never feel enough. But I just want to know these feelings I’m not alone in. It would help if someone else was feeling the guilt I am. 

 

Thanks for reading. 

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Remember the Big Mo
On 4/3/2021 at 6:44 AM, Healing2021 said:

I keep waking up early and the emotions hit me hard. We got my dads Ashe she the other day and that was a huge trigger. I felt like I did something wrong by letting them cremate him. When I saw him at the hospital, I had this intense urge to yell at the doctor and tell them they had to done enough. To come fix him. When I got his ashes, it almost felt the same. I was almost his caregiver, and he looked to me to help. He asked me for help when he wasn’t feeling well and I did everything I thought was right at that moment but I didn’t help him like he wanted. I keep going back and wondering what if I did this and what if I did that. If covid wasn’t around would I have taken him to a hospital? In the months leading to his heart attack, I would try to get him to stop smoking. I’d try to get him to eat better and we’d try walks. It felt like I had horribleness anxiety around losing him ever since covid started and sometimes I blame myself for that. I blame myself for quarantining him, wondering if I didn’t need do that would I have seen the heart attack sooner. His last day he spent alone in his room because of me. 

At night he was really hurting And I was up listening and checking on him. But it doesn’t feel like enough because it wasn’t enough. My brother said, “we shouldve just taken him to a hospital when he wasn’t feeling well”, and that triggered me a lot also. I just feel like this was my responsibility and I let him down. I’m not a doctor, I keep getting told. I did what I thought was right in the moment, I keep getting told.  But none of that seems right now. Now when I google things I see the symptoms. I was worried for months he was sick,but I thought it was just my own anxiety. I worried about him and my brother so much after all we’ve been through. 

 

I know now there are stages, and my loss just happened under a month ago. But it feels like the guilt stage is never ending. I want to believe that his is not my fault. I want to believe even if i had gotten him to a hospital it may not have turned out ok still. I want to believe there was nothing more I could could’ve done. That’s just impossible right now. My friends who supported me are now back to work, back to their lives where all their loved ones are living. And I’m here, crying, trying to reach out but everyone I see asleep to rest for their next day. This just sucks so bad. 

 

My dad wouldn’t want me blaming myself. He’d tell me not to worry, he always did tell me that. He’d tell me that we didn’t know. If I knew he was that I’ll, the entire day would’ve been different. The entire year would’ve been different. I guess sometimes I feel I can be in control of things I really am not in control of. Being the mom since I was 15, when my own mom died, probably has left me with some ideas that just aren’t true. I just feel like I spent the entire year anxious and scared to lose him. I didn’t hug him as much because I was working outside the house and didn’t want to expose him. I’d watch tv and eat dinner in my room instead of with him because I wanted that time but I always thought I should eat with him. I did, just not enough. Like I said, I’m told no matter what it would never feel enough. But I just want to know these feelings I’m not alone in. It would help if someone else was feeling the guilt I am. 

 

Thanks for reading. 

My husband of 40 years passed away on April 2, 2021 after a 18 month long terminal illness. He had several hospital stays that were very traumatic-a perfectly normal person got hospital induced dementia that took quite a while to bounce back from. In the last month of his life, doctors were very anxious for him to go back to the hospital to help balance out his fluid levels-he did not want to go so we started the tests outpatient. He was very weak and collapsed and died at our front door when we got back from his last ultrasound. Not a moment goes by that I don't think-"what if..." fill in the blanks. It has been heartbreaking and now I am finding I am able to write more of the story-if we had taken him to the hospital: I would not have been with him due to new covid restrictions and he would have been alone, the fluid rebalancing would likely have been short lived as it had been in the past, his physical suffering and mental anguish would have continued. I also understand that this guilt is part of grieving as we use it to not start the grieving process and to defer acceptance that we have lost a loved one. In the last month I have found that grief is not linear-I am a pinball in a pinball machine, some minutes I know which way the ball is going, other times I am bouncing from side to side uncontrollably. For now we need to try to not be so hard on ourselves and try to have that inner voice use language that we would use with a friend in the same situation.

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