Life after Death
Moving beyond the passing of a loved one is always difficult, but grief can be compounded when the survivor is tormented by guilt. What’s at the root of this emotion and how does one work through it?
Though it's been over 30 years, Lisa’s voice still cracks with emotion when she shares her story. Shortly after she married, her parents made aliyah. “My father begged me and my husband to move to Israel at least for the first few years of our marriage. I wanted to,” she relates, “but my husband had been accepted to medical school and he wanted to get started already.”
Two years later, Lisa’s father was diagnosed with a rare aggressive cancer.
“I visited many times that year but in my last conversation with him — and this is engraved in my mind forever — he said to me, ‘Don’t you wish now that you moved here?’ Well,” Lisa shares, “I don’t blame myself for not moving to Israel. I knew my husband’s wishes superseded my dad’s, but I still feel torn apart because instead of just saying ‘Yes, Daddy, I love you so much and wish I’d spent these last few years with you,’ I started defending my position, explaining why I had to do what I did. I’ve been replaying that scene for the last 30 years, each time wishing I would have spoken differently.”
When an individual passes away, grief is the normal reaction. But almost as common — though not nearly as well acknowledged — is a sense of guilt.
“Guilt is one of the most powerful negative reactions to the loss of a loved one, equaled only by anger as a common grief experience,” according to Carol Staudacher, grief consultant lecturer and author of Beyond Grief: A Guide for Recovering from the Death of a Loved One (New Harbinger Publications).
“After someone close dies, people may blame themselves for things they did or didn’t do that they feel contributed to the death of their loved one.” Ms. Staudacher continues, “Regardless of how or why our loved one died, we sift through the evidence of past behavior, giving ourselves reasons to be miserable. We become tormented by our own perceived failures, omissions, insults, poor judgment, or unwise choices.”
Why the Guilt?
When Sora’s dear friend died of cancer five years ago, Sora couldn’t shake her intense feelings of guilt.
I should have visited more. I should have asked her how she felt. I saw she wanted to talk about serious things — like dying — but I pushed her off. I rationalized that she didn’t really want to talk about it, but really I was scared to talk about it. I should have encouraged her to talk, but I thought, who do I think I am to bring up such topics? Maybe she’ll be hurt and angry if I talk about it. So it became the elephant in the room. She must have felt so alone those last months — I don’t think anybody talked about it with her. Why wasn’t I there for her in her ultimate time of need?
“There is always a modicum of guilt [when a loved one passes away] because we are human and we could always do better,” says Dodi Lamm, a clinical social worker in West Hempstead, New York, specializing in treating people undergoing life cycle changes. “We could have called more often, made the person happier, run to the store more frequently, it’s endless.”
Dr. Yetta Krinsky, a psychiatrist in Melbourne, Australia, works with women primarily to facilitate the healing process from severe childhood and adult trauma. She describes different kinds of guilty feelings which may emerge in the healing process from loss of a loved one. She describes a patient of hers — a young widow with small children whose husband died of brain cancer.
“In her case, the feelings of guilt she experienced were not surprising. The young wife and mother was torn between her need to mother and shield her young children from what was happening to their beloved father, and her husband’s need for love, care, and support. When she was with one, she would feel guilty about the needs of the other, and when she ended up feeling resentful, she would feel guilty about that too.”
Another instance Dr. Krinsky cites is of a young teenager who had a fight with her mother; soon afterward the mother died in a car accident. The girl’s strong feelings of guilt persisted until she was able to understand that their argument did not diminish her love for her mother or her mother’s love for her. “These are both normal responses any person would feel in that situation,” stresses Dr. Krinsky.
Dr. Krinsky shares a third example of a patient who was angry at her mother for dying young and abandoning her — and then felt guilty about her irrational anger. Once she was able to express these feelings and have them validated as a natural reaction to such a loss, she was able to heal.
When someone passes away from an illness, the disease itself might affect his mood and behavior, comments Dr. Krinsky, whether it’s due to severe pain or side effects of medication. This can make him difficult to care for, engendering feelings of resentment in the caretaker — for which he might feel guilty later.
In fact, that pain and suffering may lead the caretaker to feel an initial sense of relief when the patient dies — death at least ends the agony. But then he’ll feel ashamed of these emotions. It’s important to understand, grief specialists counsel, that relief is a normal reaction. If an illness was lengthy, the caregivers have already gone through much of the grieving process, as each small deterioration takes their loved one further and further away.
“In addition,” adds Dr. Krinsky, “not everyone who gets sick or faces life-threatening illness is a complete tzaddik. Life may have already been difficult beforehand, and a person may have many normal mixed feelings about his ill family member.”
This jumble of emotions may also constrain the caretaker from speaking ill of the dead relative, says Dr. Krinsky, even in a therapeutic setting — even though airing these feelings can be a significant step towards recovery.
In addition to guilt about what was, guilt can also follow what is. It’s common for someone who suffered a loss to feel guilty for laughing or having fun or enjoying anything ever again. They feel it’s a betrayal to the memory of the deceased.
Most feelings of guilt are caused by the onset of other negative emotions. But sometimes there is guilt precisely because there are no emotions.
Lea’s grandfather passed away when she was 19 and he was 75. Upon hearing the news, she said the requisite baruch dayan emes and then continued to prepare a math lesson for her second grade students. At the shivah house full of weeping relatives, Lea began to feel guilty for having no emotions about her grandfather’s death.
Lea brought up her feelings to her mentor who asked if she was close to her grandfather. Describing him as a quiet, reserved man, Lea said she never had a real relationship with him. “Your reaction is quite normal then,” explained her mentor. “If you had no connection when he was alive, you won’t have any after he passes away.”
This tallies with Dodi Lamm’s opinion that the relationship with the deceased prior to death often determines the guilt factor after they pass away.
What If…?
Regardless of what causes the guilt, obsessive thoughts about “I could have, should have, but didn’t” are common.
Marsha S.’s elderly parents died four years ago, but she’s still unable to let go of her guilty feelings over their deaths. When they took ill, Marsha wrapped up her affairs in Baltimore and moved to Montana to be with them. Aside from the fact that they were not religious and lived in a completely non-Jewish area where it was difficult to obtain kosher food, they were also difficult people.
“As I was growing up, we were close at times and very distant at others,” Marsha shares. “I could never quite trust them. One day they’d go on about how much they love me, and the next they’d yell and scream at all the things I’ve ever done wrong.”
Nevertheless, Marsha cared for them for nine months.
Yet Marsha is ridden with guilt. An only child, she was left making all medical decisions, some of which she second-guesses. Her litany of guilt runs like this: I okayed various medications including morphine. Maybe the morphine hastened their death? I okayed hospice care. Hospice helps patients die, not recover. Maybe my parents weren’t on the verge of death, and hospice killed them. My father died first and I took his body back East to be buried in a kosher cemetery because Montana has none. Meanwhile my mother grew sicker and got hooked on pain medication. If I would’ve been with her the whole time, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten addicted and she would’ve recovered.
Back and forth Marsha goes, realizing she could only have been in one place at one time, but then swinging to the other side, if only I wouldn’t have stayed away so long.…
Others feel guilty not as much about the time of the person’s illness but about their actions during the course of the relationship.
Rina T. regrets not giving her father enough attention when he was alive and well. “I did call daily,” she remembers. “But when he’d want to talk longer, I would say something like, ‘I can’t, Ta. I have to go now.’ Today those words haunt me. Why didn’t I give him the extra time?”
Rina wishes she’d asked more questions about her father’s life in Europe, about his family, gotten to know him better.
Misplaced Guilt
Guilt has many functions. It can be productive, such as when guilt prods someone to make amends for past mistakes and moves him forward in an emotionally stable way. If a person truly wronged the deceased and did not correct it in his lifetime, there are steps one can take to ameliorate the situation. But sometimes guilt is misplaced, a cover-up for other painful emotions.
When a loved one dies, people often feel a loss of control. They did not want the relative to die, yet they were powerless to stop it. Blaming themselves for the death, as painful as that is, is less frightening than acknowledging that they have no control. Especially in cases of extreme trauma, like a terrorist attack, this defense mechanism of assuming responsibility for death is common. Rather than accept that life is unpredictable and unsafe, the survivor prefers to believe he could have prevented it.
Guilt can also be a way of not dealing with grief. Instead of contending with the intense feeling of loss, the bereaved individual obsesses over what he should have or should not have done. Imagined guilt also keeps the grieving person attached to the deceased — painfully so, yet still attached. What he doesn’t realize is that once he allows himself to emerge from his grief and guilt, he will feel even more connected to the deceased and in a more wholesome way.
Although it’s been 20 years since Perri lost her baby hours after birth, she cannot shake her guilt. “I’ve basically worked it out,” she says, “but there is that kernel of guilt that niggles whenever it comes to my mind.”
“My water broke at five months, and I was told since the lungs were not developed, there was less than a five percent chance of survival,” Perri shares. “For four weeks I was in limbo, waiting to go into labor. I was young, and had with two little ones at home. At 26 weeks, my labor began. The doctor gave me an epidural and Demerol, so I basically slept through the birth. I have a distinct memory of seeing the baby right after birth and my husband saying something about the baby being ‘pinked up,’ and then I fell back asleep. That night I remember a doctor coming into my room and informing me that the baby ‘expired,’ like a library card. Although, of course, it was expected, I was devastated.”
Weeks later, Perri received the hospital bill detailing the tests the baby endured in the eight hours he lived.
“That’s when I started feeling guilty. They did a spinal tap, a chest X-ray, a stomach X-ray, and more. They mutchered this poor neshamah that was dying anyway, for nothing. And I let them! Of course I had no idea they were doing all those tests but I berate myself to this day for not knowing. If I would’ve told them not to go near him, they would have listened, but I didn’t. I could have protected him, I should have protected him!”
Speaking Your Truth
Perri, Marsha, Rina, and countless others walk around with unresolved guilt. They are fully functional; unless you speak to them intimately, you will not know the pain in their hearts. However, guilt can at times be so great that it impedes functioning.
Dr Krinsky discusses a young woman who experienced unresolved grief and depression since the death of her father five years previously. She had attended grief counseling and support groups but had made several suicide attempts over that time. It took two years of therapy with Dr. Krinsky until she felt safe enough to disclose that her father physically abused her for years and had in fact died of a brain hemorrhage while he was attacking her. Her deep guilt stemmed from her initial relief at her father’s death. She had never been able to tell anyone that before, but once she spoke her truth, she was able to move on and heal and thrive.
“When we say ‘speaking your truth’,” Dr. Krinsky explains, “it means some things are true and real and hard, possibly painful, to say. These things hold a lot of energy and pain and perhaps distort a person’s view of himself because they have never been spoken or validated or honored.”
The work that needs to be done in order to heal depends on the extent of self-condemnation and how much it obstructs daily living. If guilty feelings are not deep-seated, it may be enough to talk them through with a trusted, objective friend — someone who can shed a little reality on the person’s unrealistic expectations of themselves.
But some bereaved people become tortured by guilt, and it colors their whole life. It’s important for them to work on accepting their guilt, understanding it, and dealing with it. Psychosomatic illnesses, depression, and impaired relationships with others can result from unresolved guilt feelings. Particularly in the elderly, grief can be complicated by the development of a depressive illness with more severe sustained feelings of sadness, loss of interest in usual activities, social withdrawal, loss of hope for the future, and persistent poor sleep, energy, concentration, and motivation. Treating the depression allows the healing process from grief to continue.
A difficult and very painful source of guilt comes from anger at Hashem over what has transpired. Sharing these thoughts with someone who can listen without judging provides significant relief and allows the hurt person space to process.
“Sometimes,” Dr. Krinsky says, “I open the conversation with ‘You must be upset with the Eibeshter.’ At times they start to cry and say yes. Once they can say their truth, they come to a place of healing and achieve even greater closeness to G-d.”
Is Complete Healing Possible?
Unfortunately, Marsha doesn’t feel quite at peace. “With my dad, I feel better but the guilt over my mom lingers,” she says. “I just don’t feel whole.”
Marsha intellectually understands that from a Torah perspective, she did her best — even more than most would do. She also recognizes that Hashem is the one who decides when people will die.
“On some level, though” she confides, “I still walk around with this guilt. I don’t know, maybe that’s part of life — it never gets fully integrated.”
Dr. Krinsky has thankfully seen many people heal from loss and trauma. She maintains there is an inner drive to heal, to find meaning and move on from even the greatest trauma. And this is not necessarily just through therapy. Her young widowed patient found solace in a book written by another young widow who had gone through an almost identical experience of being torn between a dying husband and young needy children. Receiving validation from the book enabled her to move forward.
One of Dodi Lamm’s clients found a way to assuage her guilty feelings over the contentious relationship she had with her married son, who passed away. “He left a wife and kids,” she shares. “This woman showers the grandchildren with gifts, comes to all their plays, etc. and is supportive of her daughter-in-law whereas prior to her son’s death, they had little relationship. She is doing what she thinks her son would’ve wanted; it alleviates her guilt.”
Perri shares her path to recovery. “That whole first year I was a basket case. I was physically functioning but furious, sad, crying, guilty, incredibly fragile.” Perri didn’t find therapy to be beneficial. “And it wasn’t like today,” she maintains, “when there’s more access to support groups and organizations who deal with these types of losses.”
“I remember getting a call from one organization but that was it — no follow-up. I really suffered. But in truth, I don’t know that anybody can push you along faster. It’s a process. It sort of has to happen.”
What was helpful — something Perri would pass on to those suffering from similar emotions — was believing she did the best she could with the tools she had at the time. “And sometimes,” Perri adds, “I believe Hashem simply takes away a persons seichel. This concept has given me a measure of peace.”
Whatever complex relationship we had with the deceased, whatever blurry vision they had in this world, they now have pristine clarity in the Olam Ha’Emes. Surely they would want their loved ones not to stay mired in guilt but to embrace life, celebrate it, and most importantly, to think about them with joy and love.
Guidelines for Coping with Guilt
- Know that healing is possible, no matter how long you have been harboring pain and guilty feelings.
- Face the guilty feelings and acknowledge their validity. This will help you move on.
- The last days or hours of a loved one’s life are often excruciatingly painful. If so, don’t go there. Instead, go back in time and force yourself to think of happy memories.
- Treat yourself kindly. Pat yourself on the back for your loyalty and dedication, sometimes giving up your own agenda to be there for your loved one.
- Realize that we don’t decide who will live and who will die. If your decisions were made with the best intentions, you have to give up the responsibility of how things turned out.
- Talk to someone you feel comfortable with and trust — a close friend, rabbi, or mentor. If necessary, seek professional counseling from a trained therapist.
- Perform a reality check. People tend to idolize the deceased after they die, setting themselves up as the eternally guilty party when thinking about former interactions. Recognize that the deceased was human, with faults, and although neither of you may have acted perfectly, you did act normally.
- Try to do something for the neshamah of the deceased person, whether by doing mitzvos in his memory or emulating his special
- Remember you are never alone. The One who made you knows and understands you and feels your pain; He will help you through it.
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 365)
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