Guilty as Charged

There is not one single person that I have talked to who does not feel guilt. The degrees of guilt are different of course, but it seems everyone has it. I had it for a long time after Tim died. Had I listened closer, done something different, spoke the right words, opened my eyes, sensed the impending doom... something, anything. Guilt has a long long list. We take that guilt on like it was made just for us. We don't fight it, we pull it in like an old friend come to visit who decided to stay. It's natural to feel guilt, normal. When we lose someone though, it becomes this huge mass of rolling thunder pounding against our hearts. We believe so easily that we are to blame and so hard to realize that we are not. We had no control over their dying, but we convince ourselves that we, in our god like armor, could have prevented it. Guilty as charged.

In the beginning, we thought Tim had taken his own life. The horror of that was too much to take. We asked ourselves and each other why we did not see it coming, why we did not do something if the signs were there. We did not blame him, become angry with him, but we did blame ourselves. We were there through it all and saw what lead up to that final night. Why did we not realize? It was much much later that we came to know that he did not take his own life. He was flirting with suicide, but he died before he took that step. We will never know if he would have pulled back at the last minute or continued. It doesn't really matter for the end result was the same. Tim died and we carried a deep, unrelenting guilt for not being there for him.

When we lose someone we love we go over every instance of our lives with them and pick it clean. We will find things we could have done different that we may believe would have made a difference. In that way, we pick and choose and find our guilt.  Or maybe someone will heap that guilt on us... and we accept it. So simple to find it, not so simple to see that in the big picture, many things were set in place and our puny actions or non-actions have no meaning in the long run. We suck that guilt in. It destroys us if we allow it too. We won't start the healing process as long as we hold that so close to our souls. We will never heal from the loss, thats a given. But we can live, we can heal from so much of it. We can dull the sharp edges. That is healing in its own way.

I am not saying that some are not guilty for that is not true. There are those who push someone beyond their limit. There are those who take a life. Those who drove drunk by choice. Deliberate harm. I don't need to go there, it is self-explanatory. When someone dies, we take on more emotions then one person should ever have to handle. As time moves on, we slowly shed these, or they modify, become less. But the guilt can grow. It can grow so huge that it becomes the life of us, takes on a life of it's own. It taints and colors the world around us. It becomes the dominate force in everything we do, every decision we make. It literally puts on our skin and becomes us. We are guilt and it is stamped on our forehead for us to see every time we look in the mirror. Is that how you want to live your life? Guilty as charged.

Guilt is the enemy, not your friend. It shreds what little you have left and then chews you up some more. It is relentless and it will not stop until you stop it. No one can do that for you. I had to stand back and look at his loss from a different direction. I had to understand that it was not my actions nor my non-actions that took him away. Sometimes it is so much easier to blame yourself because you don't know why they are gone. In the need to have a reason, we take on that blame. We will search though every little thing we ever did to find that blame and find it we will.

So here is what I am guilty of. I love my kids far beyond anything I ever imagined was possible. I taught them about the world to the best of my ability. I stumbled, fell, stood back up and tried again. I was not always mindful of what was going on in their lives for it was their lives to live. But I was always there if they needed me, if they needed to talk. I have my daughter and grandsons and still, I am not mindful of every single thing in their lives, but I love them beyond the limits of my life. My love for them deeper now that I know how sudden and complete death is. My loss will always be a part of me. I will love and miss Tim until I die. I will cry and hurt and have really bad days and some really good days too. Guilty as charged. 'Forever Mom.'