Guilty Grief

Delayed Revelations and Learning Discerning

Mom pulled her purse into her lap and rummaged around, eventually retrieving a crisp white envelope. She held it in both hands at the edge of the table. Her pale hands trembled in the ambient light.

We were at Hillstone, one of my favorite restaurants, and one of the only restaurants in which I can actually hear what the person across the booth from me is saying. Thank you, Hillstone.

But mom had gone quiet. Not that she was usually loud, per se, but it was a deliberate silence, not a natural lull in conversation.

Mom had come in town to visit me for a few days. I’d picked her up from the airport and we’d stopped for lunch. We were comfortable with each other, but a subtle unspoken tension had developed on the drive and we’d dragged it into the restaurant with us. Sarah. Instead we talked about my work, mom’s boyfriend, the weather.

We hadn’t spoken about Sarah’s suicide as much as I thought we would. It had almost been two years. It felt like mom never really wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t want to force it. Not that any of us really wanted to, but I wanted mom to know we could talk about it. About her.

It was hard to know how much to say, or not. And when, or not. I’d gingerly broach the topic now and again. Mom usually deflected with a response about challenges with Sarah’s estate resolution, or something about the investigation. Sometimes mom mentioned general regrets, but she never got specific. I had a lot of regrets too. I felt sad, mad, and guilty. All the time.

Sarah’s death had unhinged me in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined. Yet, somehow, it was even more impactful to mom. More personal. She still saw Sarah, each of us girls, as her little babies. And to her, one of her little babies was dead.

After placing our orders, we had a little downtime. That’s when mom had pulled out the envelope. In that stilted silence Sarah seemed to sit between us.

Looking at mom’s hands, I saw Sarah’s hands. The same shape, the same manner of gesturing as she turned the envelope over slowly with her fingers. Fingers also not unlike my own. Mom’s face was the pattern for Sarah’s. Her jawline, the shape of her brow.

Mom noticed me noticing her and looked up. It had been a long time since we’d really held eye contact. Her blue eyes seemed to search in mine. She’d always had deep-set eyes, accentuated by the contrast of her high and pronounced cheekbones. A striking beauty, people always said. Now her eyes seemed almost lost in her face, grief and time wearing the skin around them as if to gently shield her from things she might not want to see. But peering from those folds, it felt she did want to see me more deeply than ever before. It made me a little uncomfortable. But, I tried to be available, to hold her gaze.

I wondered if I should say something, but it felt like mom was preparing herself to tell me something important and I didn’t want to ruin it. I suspected it was related to the envelope and wondered what was inside. Maybe a note from Sarah had been found after all, or maybe mom had found some sweet keepsake.

Mom’s voice brought me back from my speculation. “You know,” she started, “The day before S died, I was on that estate mediation Zoom call.” She paused, “All. Day.”

I knew what she was talking about. There had been a decades-overdue legal proceeding with her and her siblings against the executor of their long-deceased grandfather’s estate. His money was the only money left in the family, and the executor claimed they were each entitled to much less than they had anticipated. They had finally sued and were going to resolve it, one way or another.

I also noticed how she still referred to Sarah as “S.” I wondered if mom had ever said Sarah’s full name again since she’d died.

“It was so draining,” mom continued. “We had a brief break over lunch, and I thought about checking in on S. But I told myself, ‘Nah, she’s busy getting ready for the movers, we’ll catch up this weekend.’” Mom paused, her shoulders seemed suddenly burdensome. She slumped forward slightly.

“That night I was exhausted, but it was done. It didn’t exactly go how we wanted, but it was done. The next day I felt a bit better. I was a little surprised I hadn’t heard from S, but I figured she was just busy with the move. I thought about calling her…” Mom’s eyes glassed over.

I reached my hands across the table towards her, but mom kept hers to herself, clutching the envelope at its corners. I took a sip of water, my glass clinking on the wood as I set it down, then put my hands back on the table, just in case.

“I thought about calling her to check in,” mom kept going. “To see if she wanted to grab lunch. I could bring her lunch even. But I knew how she would get. I didn’t want to interrupt. I figured she was just busy with the move and I’d hear all about it tomorrow…” mom trailed off again.

Then she hissed loudly, with a sudden hostility, “I should have called her. Should have just showed up to see how it was going.”

She’d gotten loud enough that a man at a nearby table glanced up with concern. Our eyes connected and I tried to give a reassuring smile. It was sufficient enough that he politely returned his attention to his sandwich. I looked at the other nearby tables. Everyone else seemed oblivious to us, in their own little worlds, having a nice lunch. I imagined they all had perfect lives. No dead sisters. No despondent mothers.

The quiet was stifling in the space between me and mom. Mom’s self blame was laced with shame and my own thoughts spiraled trying to rationalize her claim. I wondered if she had written out her confession of guilt, if that was what she’d wanted to talk about, what was in the envelope. If so, I couldn’t wait to tear it up.

Now I can see how obvious it should have been. Sometimes I’m a really slow learner. Of course she felt guilty, just like I did. Just like my sisters did. Each of us. But in the moment I couldn’t make the connection. I’d been so self-consumed in my own self-torture that I didn’t have capacity to process mom’s feeling of guilt. No part of me held mom accountable so I hadn’t even considered that she did. That she would. Her guilt remained unthinkable to me while mine had become self-evident.

I’d had an impulse to call Sarah that day too, but didn’t. And she didn’t call me either. In hindsight my reasons were bullshit, but at the time I thought I’d catch up with Sarah in a few days when things were a little more settled down for both of us.

But my guilt reached deeper than that one decision not to call on that accursed day.

After Sarah’s suicide, every interaction I’d had (and hadn’t) with her had been recolored as a potential pivot point that might have eventually prevented her suicide. I felt like an idiot for not understanding Sarah. I chastised myself for not having been a superior version of myself that might have encouraged her, or been in a position to support her, that would have inspired sufficient confidence for her to consider me as someone to turn to in that dark, critical moment. I lamented not pressing more when my bids for connection with her weren’t fully reciprocated, and for not responding with more enthusiasm to each of hers. I told myself a story that I—only I—was so impactful and important that I could have made a difference if only I’d been better. Tried harder. Done more. I felt guilty about my whole life, my whole being.

I knew, rationally, that it was ultimately Sarah’s choice, her action. Not mom’s. Not mine. Not anyone else’s.

But still, my guilt told me it was my fault. It felt wrong that I should be alive and she should be dead, especially with the unproductive belief that I could have—and therefore should have—kept it from happening.

One of the first books I read about suicide, The Gift of Second, by Brandy Lidbeck, had a chapter on Guilt and Shame.¹ In it, the author describes guilt as a commonly experienced emotion in response to suicide, and urges letting oneself off the hook.

“If/Then thinking is the false belief that we had the power to prevent the suicide, and, because we failed to keep the person alive, we are to blame. This belief is typically self-imposed and always inaccurate.” (p. 9)

While Lidbeck’s explanation was logically sound, it didn’t transfer directly into my experiences. At least not right away. I’d underlined relevant passages, nodded my head along as I read, felt a slight relief from the recognition in her words, but logic isn’t always accessible when confronting human emotions.

Watching mom unfold her guilt in front of me felt like she was laying my own out for analysis, spreading it across the table. She knew exactly how I felt. But, just as her guilt didn’t alleviate me of mine, I knew I couldn’t convince her away from hers. I desperately wished I had a way to let her off the hook, unburden her. Even knowing it would likely be futile, I at least had to try.

“Mom,” I said, “it’s not your fault.”

She didn’t look up.

I said it again, as firmly and gently as I could, “It’s not your fault, mom. None of us could have known.” I wholeheartedly believed that applied to mom, though not as much for myself.

We sat in silence again. Mom stared absently at the tabletop, past the envelope.

As the waitress approached with our salads, mom looked up at me. “Thank you for saying that,” she said quietly. Mom lowered her hands and put the envelope out of sight.

We ate, switching to lighter topics. The food, the weather, our plans for her visit.

After the waitress cleared our plates and we waited on the check, mom brought the envelope back up, placed it on the table, and pushed it across to me.

“What is this?” I asked, unsure.

“It’s what’s left over from Sarah’s estate,” mom replied, her words labored.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Should I open it?”

“Sure,” mom said. “Go ahead.”

The envelope was not sealed. I pulled back the flap to find a certified check from Sarah’s estate account for a little over a thousand dollars.

“Oh,” I said again. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I hope it’s helpful,” mom said. “They divvied up what was left after everything.”

“Um, yeah, it’ll be helpful,” I replied, my voice cracking. Sure, money can be put to use. But I didn’t want this money. I didn’t want mom to be giving me this money. I didn’t want Sarah’s life to have ended the way it did and for all that was left to be this fucking check.

I tucked the check back in the envelope and tucked the envelope under my thigh in the booth. I felt like I tried to tuck my guilt into that envelope too, gathered it from the tabletop, tried to make it go somewhere else for a while. But I knew it was still there.

“Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure if that was the appropriate thing to say, but that’s what came out.

Mom nodded solemnly as the waitress approached with the bill. I reached out for it and mom put her hand up.

“No, honey, let me,” she said softly.

We didn’t talk about Sarah for the rest of that visit.

Recently I found an article, “Guilt vs Regret in Grief” in which clinical social worker Lista Williams draws a useful distinction between guilt and regret.² She explains that these are not universally agreed-upon definitions, but that they have resonated as common language in her grief group.

She writes:

“...guilt occurs when we do something that we know is wrong while we are doing it, typically for ethical, moral, or legal reasons.

…Regret, on the other hand, is the emotion we experience when we look back on an action and feel we should or could have done something differently.”

Later in the article, she explains:

“We allow these should-haves to morph our regrets into guilt.”

This hit me because it helped clarify what I’d personally experienced and observed with mom. It helped me start to delineate between my own regrets around Sarah and how I had allowed them to evolve into guilt.

When my girlfriend and I stole underwear from Victoria’s Secret in 7th grade, I regretted it and I felt guilty. And rightly so. I’d learned and accepted that stealing is wrong, but I still chose to act against values that I had agreed to and internalized. In that case, my guilt had a pro-social function and was warranted because I’d violated the integrity of the person I wanted to be. I re-evaluated that friendship and the choices I was making. This potential upside to guilt makes sense in life among the living, with behaviors that can be modified moving forward.

When I remembered how I had almost called Sarah that day, it was a regret too. I wasn’t objectively acting amoral for not calling. But that regret started to transform into guilt when I passed judgment on my decision, on myself. Slowly at first, I started believing the fabrication that I could have known, should have known, and that only my poor character kept me from recognizing the potential implications of not calling my sister on any given day. The next time I came back to that same thought, I didn’t start with the regret, but picked back up from where I’d left off the last time, with how selfish and inconsiderate I was. Every time the thought recurred, I was a more wretched version of myself, and eventually the regret had become full-fledged guilt.

In my mind, it hadn’t been a passing thought to call like so many others—just like others when I had called and hadn’t—it was a malicious choice I’d made as a bad person that directly led to my sister’s suicide. My perception and memory were warped beyond recognition, but from my vantage point they had become my new truth. Mom had been doing the same thing, and we both sought to punish ourselves accordingly, as if that would make any difference. But with Sarah, there was no way for the guilt to lead to any reconciliation. There was no redemption to be had.

This distinction between regret and guilt has been helping me redefine my guilt as a mutation of my compounded regrets. It is better acknowledged as an emotional experience instead of evidence of my insufficiency as a human. This doesn’t solve everything in an instant, but is gradually helping me soften my hostility towards myself. I kept that cryptic envelope symbolically, it’s now a crumpled, tattered, haggard thing. I keep my guilt in there, carry it with me at all times. When I dump it out to look at the contents, sometimes I can identify something as just a regret, and it doesn’t go back in the envelope. I don’t have to carry it anymore.

I wish I’d learned to make this distinction while mom was still alive. Though I’m not sure that it would have changed her mind about anything. But it would have been worth a try.

Mom took her guilt with her when she passed. I’m getting slowly better at letting go of mine.

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Thank you Matthew & Zac for your feedback.

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1. Link to the book The Gift of Second on Amazon

2. https://whatsyourgrief.com/guilt-vs-regret-in-grief/