I felt a tremendous sense of guilt when my mother unexpectedly died on Christmas Eve in 2004 at the young age of 48.
My parents were preparing to move from central Illinois to Kansas City, Missouri, and I was there to help them while also trying to decide what to do with my life.
For the week leading up to her death, my mom didn’t seem well. I downplayed her symptoms as jitters, a reluctance to uproot from their rural home to a bigger city. When I finally realized what she was sensing was more than nerves, I took her to the emergency room to see what the matter was.
I feel guilt that my mom didn’t get to see what I’ve accomplished
A decade before this hospital visit, my mom had an operation to replace a leaking heart valve. Since that time, the valve had started deteriorating, and the emergency doctor said it needed replacing. In the blink of an eye, she went from preparing to move to preparing for surgery. We were all thankful when we heard the operation had been a success.
However, in the days that followed, her body wouldn’t recover from the procedure. She remained comatose and needed to be put on life support. When the time came, my father, sister, and I said our goodbyes. I was only 26 years old.
It took me a long time to move on from this moment, but the guilt and grief I’ve wrangled with since have never really gone away. I wish my mom had been around to see me finally make a living as a writer, meet my wife, and become the proud father to two amazing boys. I wish I could see her as a grandmother and support me as a parent.
I worry I won’t see my kids grow up
I’m now two years away from the age she was when she died, and I can’t shake this seemingly irrational feeling that I won’t be alive to see my 8 and 5-year-old kids grow up, graduate, and become their own people.
I think some of it stems from the guilt I’ve felt over her death. Let’s face it: it would be some serious retribution from the Almighty to take me away from my own family just as suddenly as He did with my mom.
Some of it comes from my own health issues. My scale shows I’m currently at an unhealthy weight, and my lab results sport elevated cholesterol and blood pressure levels in recent checkups. None of this is to the same degree as my mother’s health issues, but I find it concerning nonetheless. I’ve also been prone to the same severe bouts of depression that she endured when she was alive. If we share all these other similarities, why not also an early death?
I’ve learned I’m not alone in how I feel. Searching through Reddit and other message boards, I found plenty of people who believe their time is running out. I began to think that maybe these feelings weren’t so illogical after all, and I finally decided to research why I felt this way.
Her death doesn’t mean anything about my own necessarily
“It is not irrational,” explains Jumoke Omojola, a psychotherapist who helps those dealing with grief and anxiety. “But it’s not a given that if your mom or dad died young, you’re definitely going to die young.”
Plenty of evidence proves certain diseases can be passed down from parent to child. According to the book “Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment: Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Debate,” published by the National Institutes of Health, “family history is often one of the strongest risk factors for common disease complexes such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and psychiatric illnesses.”
But this doesn’t necessarily mean I will suffer the same fate as my mother. Individual physiology, lifestyle, and just plain luck also come into play. According to Omojola, my guilt plays a significant role in how I am feeling, and much of it stems from the sudden loss of connection we have when we lose someone close to us.
When caregiving and social structures change, we adjust in different ways. Sometimes, people engage in risky behaviors like excessive smoking and drinking, and others will let their minds run wild, wracked with guilt and grief.
“Guilt is there because our culture does not provide children, especially young ones, with the reason why their parents died,” she explains. “They make up their own stories when they are not provided with appropriate information about their parents or death.”
Omojola goes on to explain to me that by linking the death of my mother with my own health issues, I was correlating truly unrelated events and engaging in magical thinking. The way to overcome this, she says, is to keep challenging my assumptions. I need to look after my health and listen to my doctors. Soon, she says, I will begin to realize that just because my mother died young doesn’t mean I will, too.
However, I will probably never recover from the grief I still feel.
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