I should’ve saved my mother

[PainSharpAsAKnife]

I lost my mom suddenly while she was institutionalized (about two weeks ago) and the regret/guilt is killing me.

A month before she passed, my grandmother got a mental health warrant for my mom to institutionalize her for psychosis (possible schizophrenia). My mom had been living with my grandmother but she had been telling people that there were strange people that were trying to get her, her daughters, and breaking into her things. She also believed she had millions of dollars owed to her but could never go into detail about “how” these things were happening.

My mom also suffered from an autoimmune disease since 2010 which would put her in the ICU multiple times a year when she had a crisis. I mention this because I think this also caused her to be sensitive to sedative medication and caused her to go into a crisis and have a code blue called almost immediately.

My guilt comes into place because while mom was in the inpatient hospital for her psychosis/schizophrenia, she practically begged me to bring her home saying “nothing was wrong with her” and the people at the facility were nice but “unprofessional” so she needed me to get her out of there. I felt overwhelmed to do this as I recently got married and had a newborn at home. I didn’t think I could care for my newborn and watch out for my moms episodes. If I didn’t let her come home with me she wouldn’t have anywhere else to stay (her husband left her earlier this year, and my grandmother believed she really needed more help.

Well the day she was scheduled for discharge, she was found unresponsive in her room that morning. A week later (after numerous test) she was declared brain dead. My heart hurts so much! I feel like I robbed her of the opportunity to be a grandmother. I feel like I should’ve been a good daughter and supported her by bringing her home. She only got two weeks with her only grandchild and was hoping this would help her change. 
 

How can I cope and grieve when all I think about is how I foul have saved her from all of this?

[Summersun]

I am so sorry for your loss. I got a call earlier this year, that my mum had passed in the hospital and I was not expecting it either.  This is a nightmare, but we all have no chance to wake up from it. I feel truly, truly your regret as I go through the same thing 24/7.

Honestly, I believe you have no reason to blame yourself. Taking care of a newborn is the most stressful part any parent will go through. I think you were correct in separating your child from your mother, as people who feel paranoid can also turn violent. Imagine something had happened to your child, and how you would have felt then?

Whatver happened in the hospital is not your fault, even though I understand you're feeling that you should have protected her from whatever took place there. 

Psychiatric care in most countries is a nightmare. I do not know if you can get insight into her files. This can also bring you down, from what you might read there. Sometimes it is necessary though, just to make a decision whether you want someone to look at her before the funeral or  cremation, if that did not take place already, as I assume.

Given that it happened so suddenly, are you sure there was no medical mistake?

These things are incredibly hard to prove, especially in psychiatric hospitals. Whatever happened whether it's true or not, staff can always say that someone turned aggressive and had to be medicated or something. 

I'm not sure if you want to put yourself through that investigation, as it will not bring her back. 

What I can say is that I see absolutely no fault with you, as you had to have a clear priority -  and the hospital was in charge of taking care of her and making sure she's safe. That includes preventing a patient from self-harm.

You as one person cannot take care of three generations at the same time with vastly different needs, and obviously everyone else felt overwhelmed as well, and thought that having her at home was too dangerous for everyone involved - and that she needed professional support.

On top of that, it just seems terrible timing, as she was about to be discharged that day and was going to be with you anyhow, right? So a case of really bad luck possibly?

You cannot look into the future and could not have known that was about to happen, just a few hours prior.

Again, I fully support your decision to be with your child first. You have no way of knowing that she would not be taken care of there, especially since it was supposed to be for just short while before she would be returned to your family.

The way I see it, it was only planned as a temporary solution, and one that was intended to be better than at home, since you all are no professionals for schizophrenia. It does sound like that to be honest. And that temporary solution just turned bad without anybody knowing that ahead of time.

We are not prophets. I know this is incredibly difficult, but please try not to blame yourself, or at least a little less every day?

In case you are interested, I read somewhere that our self-blame is a way  to manage the grief. The minute we believe that we could have changed something, our brain starts feeling more in control.

In reality, our experience of a sudden and unexpected loss is completely overwhelming. So the idea of of "I could have changed something" is just an emotional strategy to make us feel in charge and suppress the pain, for the time while we think about it.

For in reality, we are just a motherless child now, grieving everything that could have been in the future, that other people or the universe robbed us off. For me, that thought is is almost too much to bear, which is probably the reason why my mind makes up different endings for this story all day long. 

From what I have read in books about grief is also, that it is common that the bereaved will go through everything in their mind that they would "give up" to have the deceased person come back to life, basically to make the event unhappen. It's called the negotiating phase, as one is trying to trade with the universe, of course without success. This can last for a very long time. 

You are probably not there yet, as the shock is very fresh for you and still unbelievable to you. Please give yourself time to get used to your new reality.

I just described the games our mind plays on us in such detail to make it clear to you that your self-blame can feel incredible real, and at the same time just be a coping mechanism. 

You are really not to blame. When something this terrible happens, our mind will try everything possible to get back into the driver's seat of our lives, basically to gain back self-control, that is to function!

And you must function at the moment because you have an infant to take care of.

So as weird as this sounds, I think the soul has figured it out quite cleverly: keeping your thinking busy with thoughts of what could have been, is absolutely torturous. But from a survival point of view, that is in the sense of evolution and keeping the species alive, probably preferable to a complete breakdown.

Which could happen in the very second that people like us realise we are actually the victims of the events here, and it would be absolutely appropriate to be horrified and traumatised. 

But then you would likely be absolutely frozen in terror - and could not lift a finger for your baby. So probably your thinking is protecting you from the harsh reality, that everything in this life is very arbitrary and coincidental and the opposite of secure. And it could turn bad any second, for all of us.

So really you are probably not responsible at all and your brain is just trying to deal with the situation.  When my mother died I was in such a shock that I heard noises and other sensations like lights about 10 times as loud or bright as I did before - and that lasted for weeks.

Your whole body is now in a state of adrenaline and shock, it is an exceptional circumstance, so the whole system is just trying to manage to stay alive.

You must not take your thinking too personal right now, since your baby will keep you from sleeping, and the rest of the time your mind is occupied by weird thoughts. Just try to not make any major decisions before you have regained your senses. Major loss of sleep can lead to hallucinations, and I think bereavement is a state very close to that.

Hope you have someone to guide you through the next months, till your system calms down and you feel like you have your feet back on the ground.

Please come back here often and let us know what you could find out - if you want to, that is - about the the situation in the hospital, because maybe the insecurity will also keep you awake at night? Everyone must decide that for themselves, whether they want to know or do not care to find out because maybe it could be too much to learn what happened there.

This is the state I am in right now as I face an upcoming surgery and really do not want to go into a hospital regarding what happened to my mummy in the care of so-called doctors. 

I know these are all not very uplifting thoughts. But I just wanted to reassure you that even if it feels like you might lose your mind any second, you are not going crazy, and also have no reason to feel responsible. 

Please let us know how you are doing. A sudden death can also feel like a major challenge for a new marriage. And you probably feel like you need to take care of everyone else's feelings now, your grandmother's who just lost her daughter after all. And likely your husband's, so that you don't feel like such a burden to him.

Which is of course nonsense probably, but also something that every grieving person goes through: subconsciously one believes to be responsible for other people's reaction and  often harbours a secret fear of losing that person as well, in case our grief is "too much" for them.

Because death is such a taboo topic we often shy away from showing our grief. When this is the only thing that really helps - to feel it, deeply feel it.

All in all to sum it up, I just want you to realise that you have a lot to take care of emotionally, and also physically with a newborn.

And I hope you either have close friends or are able to organise some support for you, like a coach for grieving or a therapist. Very often a stranger, if competent that is - listen to your gut there - can be more helpful than a family member who is also somehow affected.

And a complicated death can also tear a family apart. Possibly not yours, but just know that it has all happened before, when everyone is overwhelmed and starts blaming each other for the past events.

I would love to hear from. This is an international website so maybe with some luck you'll find someone to talk to at the weirdest times of night also 🙂

Sending strength and much love!

Best of luck to you

Summersun

[Ronni_W]

Dear PainSharpSharpAsAKnife,

I am so sorry for your loss. (I know that the words don't really feel like or bring any actual comfort, but it's all that I have to offer to you.)

Acknowledging that I may not properly understand your mom's psychological health (or ill-health) at the time, is it nevertheless possible that you felt that her being under professional oversight and care was in her own best interest at the time (even though she herself may not have thought or realized it)?

Sometimes with guilt. It is okay to look at what you thought, felt, knew and thought you knew at that time. If your heart was in the right place, and you were only looking out for the best interests of your mom...as you knew, thought and felt at the time, then that's okay.     All of us can find great wisdom -- and also beat-up mercilessly on our self over all the supposed "mistakes" that we made -- if we employ only hindsight, and what we've learned since then. But, if you heart is telling you that you did the most loving thing for your mom that you thought and knew to do when you didn't know any better...then that is okay. Trust that; know that.

You did do your best for your mom at that time, yeah?, when you had the chance, and when you could have done something different (something not quite so loving). Here it is okay to fall back on, and to trust, your own loving and positive intentions for your mom, that you had at that time.

Love and hugs and comfort. (I know it's not easy.)   Ronni