A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Cookie,

Thanks for your note and request for guidance.

There are many elements in your note. We’re going to focus on one, the sentence in which you used the word guilt twice: “You can't help but feel the guilt over the loss, the autopsy, and the guilt over what you might have been able to do.”

Guilt implies intent to harm. We don’t believe that you ever had any intent to harm your mother or to overlook anything that might have related to her health condition. We also believe that you would have done anything and everything that could be done to help her recover and to make sure she wasn’t in pain.

With that said, we recommend that you put the word “guilt” back in the dictionary, because every time you use it or believe it, you take yourself away from what will help you deal with what was and is real and is devastating you.

More accurate may be for you to say is, “I am devastated by the fact that it seems that the doctors and other professionals at the hospital were unable to see what was actually going on with my mother before it was too late. I am angry with them for what looks to be the lack of concern and attention to her that caused them to miss seeing what could have saved her life.”

Cookie, we realize that’s a rather long and almost academic sounding sentence, but we think it represents something truthful for you. We’d rather you said that and felt that, so you can then shift to the more important task for you which is focusing on what your mother’s death left emotionally unfinished for you. Otherwise you spend all your time and energy only on the end of her life and who did or didn’t do what, instead of on your lifelong relationship with your mother.

As to the very real issue about the autopsy: Our hearts go out to you on that one. Sometimes we wind up in positions where we feel obliged to break our promise. We know that your need to know what happened was so powerful that you felt compelled to do something that you’d promised you wouldn’t. We can’t speak for your mother, but we’d guess that she would truly understand your need to do that.

We recommend that you get a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook. Read it and take the actions it outlines. Among many other things, it will help you create the apology you might need to make to your mother about the broken promise, even though the apology will have to be indirect. From our hearts to yours, Russell And John