On Grief: Guilt

“You can’t keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once and move on.”
Homer Simpson

When Marissa died, I was on the phone. Well, I was more accurately asleep. She had been up late in the hospital, and I had sat in a chair next to her bed, watching television, and drawing pictures, and talking with her. As the night turned into morning, I watched her yawn, and after following suit, I climbed into the little bed next to her. I carefully tucked her head in the pocket of my shoulder and gently moved her arms so that I wouldn’t disturb her IV. Finally, I pulled the safety rail up so that I wouldn’t roll off the bed, and we went to sleep.

The first thing I remember hearing was the monitor for her pulse oximeter unit. It was an alarm that I was unfamiliar with, but in this day and age the sounds monitors make change from one trip to the ER to the next. There were no nurses in my room, no one was tending to the IV unit, and after seven years of these experiences I had become numb to such disturbances, which in the past, had never amounted to much more than an annoyance.

When the phone rang, it took me a few seconds to acclimate. I put the railing down, rolled out and stumbled around the bed. I picked up the phone—it was my mother-in-law calling to see how ‘Rissa had fared through the night.
“Fine,” I told her. “She was up until about five or so, but then she fell asleep. She’s sleeping soundly now. Its good to see her sleeping so well now after being so restless last night.”

I hung up the phone. The alarm was still going off. If I was going to be awake, that part was going to have to be dealt with. Usually I knew which buttons to push on an IV to take care of business. Perhaps a lead had fallen off somewhere, or her probe wasn’t attached to her little toe anymore. I checked all the lines and wires and found them to be securely in place at their various locations. This puzzled me. That was when I looked at the monitor screen.

The sensation was like swallowing an ice cube—cold and hard. When it hit my stomach it turned to a hot fiery coal, and spread through my belly. The monitor was flat lined. I checked for pulse (I had been through first responder training while working in private security and executive protection, and regularly trained in first aid at the hospital and youth facility) immediately and had that heat spread even further when I touched her skin. It was cold. She was cold and had no pulse. My training left me.

I flew out into the hall. I remember I wanted to yell but all I could manage was a croak. “Help me,” I said. “Help me, my baby’s dead.”

The nurses rushed in and took over. Later, I would look back on that morning in a phone conversation with Marissa’s pediatric neurologist, Dr. Michael Nigro. I told him about my training. I totally knew that within four minutes of an episode, brain death occurs. “I could have done something,” I said, “monitors are always a few seconds behind. How long must I have been on the phone? I could have done rescue breathing, I could have done compressions… but I didn’t. I just didn’t. I talked on the phone like it was going to be just an ordinary day.”

“Don’t do that,” Nigro told me. “Look, you could have done all of that, and you might have resuscitated her, but you would have a child that would only be a shadow of your daughter. She would have been a vegetable if you were able to do anything at all…”

In truth I didn’t need to hear this, I already knew. I had put down any thoughts that I could have altered this outcome in any way, shape or form. Marissa’s departure from this life wasn’t my decision to make. The sooner I was able to lay the guilt aside; the better off I was going to be. We aren’t going to heal as long as we keep on tearing the scab off of the wound.
It is perfectly natural to blame yourself for something. In my case, it was “If only I hadn’t talked so long on the phone I might have caught this early enough to save her.” For my wife it was something else entirely. For another person, maybe if they had just taken the keys from that friend, or not let them get on that airline, or if they just apologized for that argument the night before… Go ahead and blame yourself. Like I said, it’s perfectly natural.

But you can’t keep blaming yourself forever and expect to heal. That’s like a Ferrari stuck in the mud –All that horsepower and you’re just spinning your wheels.