by Mindy Yanish, Grief and Loss Support Specialist & Life Coach
For weeks I sat at my mother's bedside, and those weeks felt like an eternity. I could feel myself dying with her, which I later learned is called anticipatory grief. Hospice had already said she wouldn't be here much longer, but I'd learned by then that no one can actually know when someone is going to die.
So I told her, "I'm going to fly back to New York now."
Her final words to me were, "Why are you leaving me now?"
Walking out to my car, the guilt was unbearable. I flew home, and in less than a week, she was gone.
I carried that guilt for years.
Even though I knew I was doing nothing wrong, I still felt the sting of her words, and I felt guilt. I knew I had to leave that day. I was feeling physically ill, getting sick, and it would have been impossible to stay with her any longer.
A few days after she died, I was on the couch at a dear friend's house, waiting for her to come home from work. It was my home away from home, yet I felt desolate and empty. Both of her parents had already passed, so I hoped she could offer some comfort. But I knew it wouldn't be enough.
Sitting there, I knew I needed help, still feeling like I was dying as I had been for the months before her passing. I couldn't talk myself out of it. So I Googled "help with grief."
Up came a video: a round table conversation with several well-known people who had each lost someone dear. They were honest. They understood, from real experience, the anguish of losing a mother, especially when the relationship was as complicated as mine. For the first time since she died, I felt comfort.
I signed up for an online grief support group and attended a couple of the live sessions. It was enough that I felt I wasn't drowning anymore. Soon after, I began studying to become a grief educator, and that's when my life really changed. The training taught me how to move through my own grief in a way no one had ever mentioned before: facing a lifetime of unacknowledged grief, naming it correctly, and learning how to hold it.
That's where the guilt began to shift. It didn't come from simply being told that guilt is a normal part of grief. That felt like a platitude and did little to help me move through it. What helped was letting myself feel it. I had to stay with it. I had to understand that leaving her was an action that hurt her, and that I could hold the guilt while simultaneously knowing I was blameless, or had nothing to be ashamed of. Both of those things can and do coexist.
Once I stopped turning away from it, the guilt diminished over time.
There are still moments when I feel sad, thinking about leaving her bedside right after she asked me that question. But it no longer feels like an arrow in my heart. It has softened into something I can hold, and because I can hold it, I can sit with others in theirs.
