Hi, I’m new here, so I’m sorry if I’m doing this wrong.
I lost my mum in January 2017 and feel a lot of guilt about it. My mum had mental health issues, and whilst 95% of the time she was functional and fine, sometimes she really struggled. She had psychosis and sometimes she would hear voices in her head and when she got like that she would drink and go to bed. One night she was struggling and had been drinking and went to bed like she normally would. I was the only one in the house and I was watching something on TV. Usually I would hear my mum get up in the night a lot to go to the bathroom, walk on the landing, go downstairs etc, but this night I hadn’t heard anything. I remember getting a little worried and wondering if I should go check, and this wasn’t a new feeling because in the past I would feel like this when she had been on the same state and I’d go check on her just to see if she was still breathing in bed and she obviously was always fine. This night I didn’t go check, I thought “she’s probably fine” because she was always fine! And I thought it was just me overthinking and being worried like I normally was, so I didn’t go check. I still felt worried but I didn’t go check and just tried to think of other things and watched TV.
Later my dad came home, went to check on my mum, and we found she had died. Turned out it was mix of the alcohol and the medication she was on (that we weren’t told could be fatal when mixed together, but that’s a whole other sad story)
I feel responsible in a way for my mum’s death. I feel like if I had checked when I had that thought she could have been struggling and I could have got her help or something, but i was selfish or lazy and didn’t go check on her. I know logically that if I had really thought something was wrong I would’ve gone and checked, but me having that little niggling doubt should’ve been enough and I should h e checked! I’m so angry with myself, I feel like I was just being lazy or selfish. What if she would still be alive if I had checked?
I’ve told my family this and they don’t blame me and say there’s just no knowing when she died and even if I had checled she could’ve been dead already, but I still feel guilty for not checking. Even if I had discovered she was already dead, I still made the choice not to check for my own reasons, whatever they were, even though I was worried something might have been wrong. I don’t know what to do.
