I remember how I felt the year that I turned sixty-three - and felt guilty because my father had died years ago at the age of sixty-two. I remember how guilty I felt when my son died at the age of forty - and I was sixty-seven. Why should I live so much longer than my father or my son? Why should I be able to enjoy my spouse, my children, my rewarding work and hobbies so much longer than they were able to in their lives?
Guilt can take other forms as well. "Why didn't I - ?" You can fill in the blanks. Why didn't I see sooner how sick he was? Why did I let him drive that night? Did we really try everything we could have tried to keep her alive? Did I really tell her how much she meant to me before she died? Why didn't I see him more often when he was alive? Why did we have that last argument? Was I wrong to feel relief when he or she died?
Or we may feel guilt because we have survived and others haven't. We are grieving the loss of others and still dealing with guilt because we are alive. Why did I survive that illness when others died from it? Why did I survive that battle when my friends didn't? Is it wrong to feel gratitude and relief that I survived when they didn't?
It helps to apply logic to guilt if we are torturing ourselves with these feelings. It helps to admit to ourselves that we are human. We are fragile human beings with limited knowledge and power. We don't have god-like powers to decide who should live or die, or even when someone should live or die. We can't predict the future repercussions of our present decisions. We can't know the past, present, and future all at once to guide our actions. The truth is that we don't decide when death will arrive, and we can't predict when death will come, or how.
If we are believers, at this point we recognize that only God knows these things, only God allows these things. We can keep questioning like Job if we have a trusting relationship with God. Faith allows us to hear God's response to our painful questioning: "Accept that you are a human being who doesn't have the answers. Accept that I am God, and I do have the answers. I Am near you, always. I Love you. I love the one or ones you love and miss because they've died. Trust them to My hands."
God has created us with these very complicated feelings. It's normal and human to feel relief when someone we love has been in pain and dies. We feel relief because their pain has ended. That person is now at peace with God. It's normal to feel relief and gratitude whenever we survive and beat the odds. Guilt, relief, and gratitude all help us to make meaning and make sense of our life experiences. What can we meaningfully do with our memories of our loved one who has died? What can we meaningfully do with life that has been given to us for reasons we can't fathom? Each of us has individual answers and ways to bring meaning out of inner and outer chaos.
Eventually we can replace the guilt in our hearts with other insights. Instead of feeling guilty about out-living someone, we can remind ourselves that our lives are worthwhile to us because of their quality, not their length. And, no matter how well we know someone, we can never judge his or her life from the "outside," can't judge how meaningful or of what "quality" his or her life actually was.
We may feel guilty and mourn because we think that someone did not have a "quality" marriage, yet he or she really loved his/her spouse and derived joy from the relationship. We really have no idea how personally fulfilled or productive anyone has judged his or her own life to be at the time of his or her death. In the end, Faith teaches us that only God knows our lives, and God is merciful, and, I think, will delight us after death by showing us how meaningful our lives on earth were.
Today, when I begin grieving and feeling guilty about my father's early death, I change my mind-set by choosing to remember his life with gratitude. His life was hard and stressful in many ways. Yet I remember the joy I watched him experience.
I think of the many stories he told of young people whose lives he helped through his chosen life work as a school psychologist. I think of how he cheered me by his merry whistle as he helped the family clean house on Saturday mornings. I think of the deep faith and patriotism he taught me through our tradition of family Sunday Mass and his love for the marches of John Philip Sousa. From my perspective, my father's life was a meaningful one, and he taught me how to give my own life meaning by listening to others, by helping others.
Human lives are meaningful, no matter how long or short they are, because they impact other lives. I remember seeing a grandfather looking at his infant grand-daughter in her coffin and hearing him say "Her life was short, but it was worthwhile!" This little one had brought great love to her family, had expanded their hearts to experience deeper love, as they accompanied her through her trials with a physically defective heart. I remember the grief of a family over the death of an adult daughter with developmental disabilities. They may have felt guilt because she had disabilities and they did not. But, more overwhelmingly they felt grateful love for her meaningful life: her child-like sunny disposition had radiated love to everyone she met.
Guilt is a natural part of grieving. Grief helps us stay connected to the ones we love who died. Grief spurs us on to give our lives new depth and meaning. But we aren't meant to torture ourselves with guilt. Logic is also necessary when we grieve through guilt. We need to accept that we are human, and even forgive ourselves for being fragile, limited human beings who have no power to predict death and no power to stop death from coming.
It is helpful to experience gratitude during grieving. Faith-filled Gratitude for our loved ones' lives, which were meaningful in ways we neither know nor understand and which positively impacted the lives of others. And Faith-filled gratitude for our own lives. We may not know why, but we can accept and feel joy that we are still alive, capable of loving, capable of creating, capable of giving thanks for all who have gone before us and taught us, through the continuous grace of God, how to give deep meaning to our lives.