Survivors Guilt

[LarrysGirl]

I meant to name this topic "Survivors Guilt". I made a mistake and can't seen to be able to edit the title. I'm sorry. This has been a particularly hard time since November. Since I've reached the two yr. mark, what if any friends, have all but disappeared. NO ONE even brings up his name and I'm starting to feel some aggravation from family that I haven't moved forward or snapped out of it yet (their words, not mine). I was explaining to someone that I feel guilty that I'm here, alive, I have felt this since the day Larry died. People don't want to hear that. I know I did everything I could. I don't feel guilty about that. I know he felt I gave him everything I could when he was alive. I feel guilty because we fought his illness as a team, never giving up hope and looking forward to the life we had planned for the future. It was a long and hard battle and he held on with all his strength, hoping against hope. Now I've been left with what is left of "our" life, our dogs, etc. and I feel guilty for being here. I don't want a life without him. I'm struggling with the fact that I still have a life to live and he is gone. It is not fair. I've read that this is called "survivor's guilt". But what do you do, if this is what you feel? I can't stand it when people say to me, he wouldn't want you to feel this way. I'm sure he wouldn't but I do anyway. How do any of you cope with this feeling? Did anyone here also go thru a long illness with their spouses? Deborah

Edited December 20, 2007 by LarrysGirl

[suzanne]

Deborah

Yes, I have gone through the same thing. He would not want me to feel this way where as I didn't want him dead, but those so called comforters, THEY are not going through this. Every friend I thought I had has disappeared. I think if you have someone you love it will happen to you (it's guarenteed, one will cross over and one will be left behind) and then you will understand our pain. Until then they don't understand. Being around us reminds them death is for certain. They can ignore it for now, but each will have their own cross to bear, tailored just for them. Excuse me, but I am in a really pissy mood tonight. Dealt with too many a###holes today.

Suzanne

[karenb]

Hi Deborah,

I'm at 2 years and 5 months so I know some of the things you're talking about. I knew Jack was ill when I married him...we were married about 14 years...I didn't know he'd get diabetes on top of the two bipasses and that his heart would get worse. We had good and wonderful times for those years but he got worse and I wouldn't allow it! I helped him, did everything I could to keep him alive but he died on the freeway driving home from golf. But you know what, Deborah, I don't feel any guilt at all. I did everything I could to keep him here but he was needed elsewhere. I truly am grateful for the time we did have and give thanks every day for that. My life has changed, too. Aside from family and old friends, the people around me have changed because I have. I've always been straight forward about where I am and hope those round me are too. You can't help how you feel and if people say things to you that are hurtful, just think that they aren't where you are and just try to dismiss it. You just give thanks that you are a survivor and will continue to be. Please be good to yourself. It's a real hard time, but you'll get through it, and I hope better for it.

Your friend, Karen

[MartyT]

I meant to name this topic "Survivors Guilt". I made a mistake and can't seen to be able to edit the title.

All fixed, Deborah

[Art]

Hi Deborah,

I know exactly how you feel. I can't seem to get over the feeling that it should have been me and not Charlene. She was such a wonderful person and touched so many people she just did not deserve to die. It seems so unfair to me. I have blamed myself for her death in so many ways I have lost track of them all the while knowing I didn't do anything. It just happened. And when I try to talk to "friends" about my feelings I get that "she wouldn't want that" answer which I take as a cop out just to keep from hearing me. Some have actually told me I could move on and stop feeling these things if I'd just let myself. I know you all understand that its not that simple, but I don't know how to tell others that. It is something that won't let go of me and not something I won't let go of. If only it was so easy as just letting go.

Art

[DesertBob]

Art and Deborah,

You are both wonderful people too, and you did not deserve to die, either. Justice doesn't have anything to do with it. There isn't much justice in this world and this is one of those cases where believing there is, hurts us. Trying to make meaning where there is none, causes pain.

I find it helpful to realize that there is randomness in the world. It's not all random, and most things work most of the time, but we don't have control over some things and death is one of them. We don't get to decide when it's time for someone to die. Some deaths are more senseless and painful and less expected than others, that's all.

I could kill myself with the endless "whys". Linda has been gone almost 5 months now and there is really no rationalization that will change the fact that her death was pure and simple wrong, on so many levels that it's ridiculous. Not just for me, but for her. She loved live, she had unfinished business, and everything about the way it played out was as unkind to her as possible.

Maybe there's a reason and maybe someday I'll know what it is. Maybe I won't. Maybe I wouldn't understand anyway. In fact I think that's likely.

Nothing would give me more pleasure and relief than to make sense of her death, or to avenge it, or something. But I don't think it's going to happen, at least not while I'm trying this hard. There's no throat to choke. No one has phoned, like the terrorists do, to claim responsibility.

While your spouse lived, you would have gladly traded places with them. I've been there. I know you would have. But that wasn't offered as an option. If it had been, you wouldn't have wanted your spouse to benefit from your sacrifice of love, only to have them ramming their head into the wall day after day because they survived. It's no different just because it's happening the other way around.

Here's another way to look at it: you're the only one in pain now. So in a way, maybe you did manage to save them.

--Bob

Hi Deborah,

I know exactly how you feel. I can't seem to get over the feeling that it should have been me and not Charlene. She was such a wonderful person and touched so many people she just did not deserve to die. It seems so unfair to me.

[Stallyn]

Hi Deborah,

I pondered the issue many times and still do after nine months, perhaps the rest of my life, how someone who was healthy, happy, content and found some peace suddenly fades away, what was the odds of her instead of myself with many illnesses, to outlive her, I always told her though the years, "if I die" move on, be happy, but the guilt, she never told me that, no closure,my inability to care for her the last weeks of her life, and wondering what did I do wrong? I was blamed for her death, and paid the ultimate price of that label, well in the next life I will know for sure - why??

[KathyG]

When Bill was lying in a coma after he had been "revived" (in other words, his heart was restarted after it had stopped), I blamed myself for the state he was in, technically alive but brain-dead. I was convinced that I hadn't done enough to save his life before the paramedics came - or that maybe I should not have tried to save him at all. Bill had always said, emphatically, that he never wanted to be a living vegetable and that if it ever happened to him, he didn't want to be kept on life support. And I thought, that was exactly where he was, because of me.

I thought this until a very kind nurse saw me crying and stopped what she was doing to ask if I wanted to talk. I explained why I felt responsible for Bill's condition. She assured me that I HAD done good by keeping Bill alive till medical help arrived. She said that even if the situation had been hopeless from the start, I didn't know that and responded the only way I could have or should have: by trying to save the man I loved. The nurse added that movies and TV mislead us laypeople by making us think that CPR succeeds 100% of the time; in real life, she said, CPR usually saves fewer than 30% of patients whose hearts have stopped.

Bill had had other serious illnesses before his heart attack. He had cancer that was in remission. And then a year before he died, we found out that what we thought was his absent-mindedness was really early-onset dementia. Through all these things, I know that I did everything humanly possible to take care of him and support him. I would have given my own life to save his, but that was never an option. But at least I feel comfort in knowing that what I could do, I did.

[kayc]

Deborah,

I think Bob touched on something here, he is so right. When George died, the one consolation I had was that it was ME that was left here suffering, and not HIM, because I would not want him going through that and don't know how he could handle it. So I didn't feel guilty. On the other hand, sometimes I felt angry that I was left holding the bag.

[karenb]

Hi Lily,

I went through an illness with Jack that practically started when we got married. We were married 15 years, knew each other for 30, and I knew he had 2 open-heart surgeries and advanced diabetes. These conditions continually got worse and he died suddenly of a massive heart attack driving home on the freeway from golf. It was sudden and immediate and the doctors told me they didn't know that he would last as long as he did. It was still a horrible shock and 2 1/2 years later I remember it as if it was yesterday. I never felt any of the guilt that you're expressing, so I don't know how to help you with that. I feel much better these days and I'm sure it's because I keep myself around positive and caring people, keep busy volunteering, selected a new church home and ladies' group, try to take care of myself physically by eating pretty healthy and exercising 3 times a week. I feel very sad but there's nothing I can do but keep on keeping on. I do hope you find ways to help yourself feel better. Let us know how you're doing.

Your friend, Karen