Struggling with Guilt
Dear Books,
My pain point involves trying my best to help my terribly lonely widower father out of a financial crisis (he was conned by a woman he believed cared for him), then moving him closer to me in his last year, only to be the one to find him dead in his apartment 7 months later. He died alone, and he’d likely been dead for a few days when I found him, and I struggle profoundly with the guilt surrounding that.
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Dear Struggling,
I would like to start by telling you that you are a wonderful daughter.
Your love for your dad shines through your letter. You showed up for him in his moment of darkness—not to judge him or to make him feel ashamed, but to genuinely help him. To be close to him.
Can you see what a kindness this is? Can you see what a profoundly difficult thing this was, and you still did it?
This is why I would gently disagree with you that your dad died alone. I mean, yes, he was physically alone, but your love had already broken down the door, filled up the room, and coated the walls when he passed. You loved him the best way you could, and that love was present at his last breath, even if you were not.
In your letter, you called it “moving him closer to me” and I hope you see that this was proximity, yes, but that it was also a way to bring him closer to your own loving heart. In the same way your love was with him at the end, he was right there with you, too.
You loved your dad and you did the best you could for him. That is enough, Struggling. You were enough.
And in order to believe that, you must do the hard work of forgiving yourself. Of letting yourself off the hook for this terrible situation that was not your fault. A situation that would have been so much worse had you not stepped in.
“You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself,” writes Cheryl Strayed in her book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.
I am recommending this book to you because I want you to read other people doing their best and wondering if it’s enough and mending their broken hearts over and over. This book is like lye, which is an effective dissolving agent, and it eats away at the hardness around our hearts until we can feel all the tenderness and love and compassion and forgiveness that is available to us in the whole wide world.
Lye is also great for making soap, and soap can cleanse us. May this book cleanse you of your guilt—of this unnecessary thing you picked up because you thought it belonged to you, when instead what belongs to you is grace, grace, and more grace.
I hope you will find it in these pages, Struggling. You are worthy of it.
Much love,
Lara
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