On grief, guilt and dying twice….
OUR FAMILY support group at Connie’s care facility is going to meet in a few days and talk about grief. I’m also going to bring up guilt and ask the expert if they are companions.
The American Psychiatric Association says grief is “the anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person……regret for something lost, remorse for something done, or sorrow for a mishap to oneself.”
I don’t know that I have experienced grief on this trip yet, although I guess realizing that with each passing day one of the most important relations you ever will have is changing, moving toward its own death brings a hint of grief.
Here is a reality. A dementia patient dies twice. There is the death of the person that comes when memory is gone, and they stare at you without seeing you for what you have been for all the time they’ve known you. I have watched that empty, or maybe quizzical, stare on the faces of Connie’s unit mates.
When that day comes, for me, it will be the day Connie dies. If I could, I’d put it on the tombstone, on the death certificate. But I can’t. That date will have to be the date the physical body finally succumbs.
But I know that real, true grief will come with that first death, but for the most part it will be a grief lived alone. There won’t be an obituary, a funeral with the departed’s favorite songs and friends sharing memories. No one will bring over an apple pie or fried chicken. The day of that death, for the world outside of us, will be a normal day.
When I move about town, people will continue to ask, “How is Connie?” because, after all, there remains a living body. I don’t know what I will answer. To say “she died” will not be literally true and will require more explaining than I want to do.
Then comes guilt. Not the small guilt I feel now when I am among friends, or on an outing I once would have shared with her. It won’t be the guilt I feel for having fun while she sits in a memory unit.
I have been warned, by books and fellow travelers, that the ultimate guilt I will feel will come when the heart ceases to beat. It will be a guilt caused by feeling a sense relief, for us both – a final release. I have been told to expect some grief, at this physical passing, this second death. I’ve been told there will be a final tear or two.
But it won’t be like the grief I will go through on the day the soul, the heart, the mind leave go to a world I cannot enter, leaving the body behind.
I will ask the experts, and my fellow travelers, when our little group gathers next week, if this is all true. But I think I know the answer.
Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. Since 1995 he has operated an international consulting, public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development with major corporations, organizations, and government. Semi-retired, he and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].