When tragedy strikes, it’s natural to want to blame. We often blame ourselves as well as others. I have rehearsed over and over what I or others could have done to make the outcome of losing Carol different. This is a time when we say, “If only,” “Why didn’t I,” “Why didn’t they,” “I should have known,” etc.
Here are a few of the thoughts that have gone through my head and still do, at times.
If only Kris and Amber hadn’t gone to her dad’s on Thanksgiving, she wouldn’t have gotten Covid.
If only I had taken Carol from the hospital straight to the skilled nursing facility, as was suggested by the medical staff, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten the UTI that put her back in the hospital.
Why did the doctors send her to the skilled nursing facility when her body was so full of IV fluids that in four days she was back in the hospital for a third time with major fluid overload?
(It took nine days to take twenty pounds of fluid off of her, resulting in staying in the hospital three weeks and four days.)
Why didn’t the medical staff and I realize that we were starving her to death? (She was pocketing her food in her cheek rather than swallowing it)
If only we had realized that she needed a peg tube to direct feed her before it was too late.
(The peg tube should have been put in her two weeks earlier. By the time we started it, she was way too weakened for it to be effective.)
These things truly could have possibly made a difference.
The list of “If only’s” and “why didn’t I” goes on and on.
So, what am I to do? I must come to acceptance of my humanity and the humanity of others.
At the time, I made the best decisions for Carol that I knew to do. The doctors and medical staff are human and are overloaded with the care of so many people. We sometimes forget that doctors are frail humans who also make mistakes and fail to see the situations they are in with clarity. As the saying goes, ‘Hindsight is 20/20.”
If I am to experience healthy grief, I must rid myself of false guilt. True guilt requires forgiveness. False guilt requires acceptance. I must accept the humanity of myself and others.
I must come to realize that my sovereign God is able to do His will regardless of anyone’s failures. I must realize that God has chosen this to be the time to bring His little daughter home to Him.
And I must be grateful that God answered a long standing desire of mine and Carol’s that she would die before me because no one would care for her the way I have.
