One of my readers wrote in last week: “Why don’t you ever write about guilt and death? To my mind, and I speak from experience, guilt is the most important and horrible component of what goes on when someone passes. What gives with you? The biggest side-effect of dying, and everything that encompasses (Wills, funerals, bedside chats etc) is guilt? Discuss it!”
Actually, pratically every reader who’s ever emailed me with a question is really dealing with guilt, implicitly or otherwise. I get questions all the time from grown children, guilty that they never spent enough time with their father while he was dying. Or ex-spouses, guilty that they were unfaithful 15 years earlier to a dead wife or husband (the same dead wife or husband who left them, by the way, once the infidelity was discovered).
Or parents, guilty that the Will they’ve written seems to favor one offspring over the other.
In other words, dying, or the prospect of dying brings out the guilt in all of us with about the same inevitability that damp weather brings out rheumatism.
Why?
Well, I can’t speak to rheumatism (yet), but the problem with dying is that after that’s over and done with, no one ever gets a second chance. It’s the final exam. No one ever gets a re-take.
You never made it to your father’s deathbed? There’s no way to compensate for that. Your best friend never forgave you for some misdeed — and then she died? You’re going to have a very hard time mending your friendship in her absence. You never repaired relations with your late sister? Right: too late now.
I know that even among the most thoughtful, generous and attentive friends and relatives, guilt can occasionally erupt after someone close passes away. Rationally or not, some of us feel we could have, should have done more for the departed — even if in fact, we did more than enough while that person was alive. But I’d say in general most of us know when we were good and steadfast friends. And we also know when we weren’t.
So — I hope this doesn’t sound too grim — but I’d advise readers who wish to avoid guilt as best they can to think of all the people they love as though they were going to die. Which, in a way, is perfectly true. What do you want to happen before that event occurs? What would you like to do for them? How would you like them to feel about you?
Then — act the way you think best.
Maybe guilt is the entire realtionship in such situations, with a huge focus on the negative. So when you feel guilty, actively think of the positive.
Judy, I just love, love, love this idea your reader who told you to write about it. I never thoguht about that angle before. Thanks for your analysis, and thinking about it now. I would like to add a point. There is a lot of guilt associated with the death of close people. But rarely with more distant ones. Now why is that?? It’s probably a reflection of the grief level and also of the inexplicability of death. When a loved one dies, there is no simple explanation so we resort to guilt.
get real, judy, no one is going to treat people - family, friends or colleagues - as though they are going to die tomorrow. Would I fire my useless administrative assistant if I knew she was going to die tomorrow? Would I tell a kid he better shape up in school or no car forever if I knew some horrible tragedy would strike? Would I yell at my mother about her attitude (negative) toward my current significant other if i knew she was about to return to her Maker? Life is about getting along with stuff, not about visualizing the gream reaper wherever we look. My view is: you prescribe a formula for paralysis.
Absolutely spot on. A lot of misery would be saved if we considered our actions irrevocable.