No Excuses

Somewhere I read something about a study showing the difference between feeling guilty and having regrets. It got me thinking about guilt and regret. The study said that humans can experience intense guilt and then move on. But feeling regret is a pervasive feeling that sticks. Recently I have been thinking about the difference between forgiveness and excuses. I think guilt and excuses go hand in hand with forgiveness and regret. There are terrible events that happen in life, accidents, death, disease, betrayals, loss of life and we grapple with guilt, regret, forgiveness, and excuses. I zigged when I should have zagged. I am innocent by standard. I had no idea. How was I to know. It is not my fault. I did everything I could. In May of 2004 my neighbor lost her little girl a week before her second birthday. The birthday invitations had been sent. The Mom had a wonderful party planned and we were all looking forward to it. Supposedly the same strep virus that killed Jim Henson, the muppet man, killed Caroline over one weekend. I was there. Her little body was on a heart lung bypass machine with a name I cannot remember. Witnessing parents being told that the hospital was going to (legally) turn off a machine and they were to make ready is buried inside me. The parents wanted us to see Caroline and brought us one by one back to her bed. The waiting room was a maze of personal guilt, forgiveness, regret, and excuses. In a corner was the ex-husband, father of the mother’s other child. Caroline’s regular pediatrician arrived with a fellow doctor. To our mortification, she stepped out of the elevator pushing a large stroller containing her beautifully healthy two-year-old who was also named Caroline. You can’t make this stuff up – the doctor’s name was Dr. Smart. As I remember, no one moved so I went up to Dr. Smart and offered to stay with her baby as she went back to see dying Caroline. In the weeks and months that followed, the parents would feel intense fury at this pediatrician for not sending Caroline immediately to the hospital in the first day of fever when they had taken her at the doctor’s office. There was never a discussion with the pediatrician about all the What Ifs but there was resentment and lawyers declaring no case. In the days that followed I saw a stack of photographs taken the weekend before when the Dad had taken the three kids, his, hers, and theirs on a hike in the woods. The pictures were beautiful. The grave represented a lot to the Mom and we went there on Caroline’s birthday. A misguided friend brought champagne. We all tried our best to say and do the right thing. The Mom told me how angry she got when people would say, “You look good. You are doing well. I don’t know how you do it.” Somehow that triggered an awareness that people thought falling apart was to be expected and was more appropriate. My friend said she wished there was a formal mourning structure like the old days. My neighbor bravely faced each day. And day in and day out she hung on to everything she knew about God. She told me all was well with her soul. It comforted me. She loved Caroline and she did not have regrets. There was a lot of intense guilt about big and small things. Guilt about having her hair done and wearing makeup instead of being at home in a heap facing the bedroom wall. In the end there were no lawsuits, no excuses. Caroline got sick and died. My fifteen year old son wrote a condolence letter to the Mom from the barbed wire fenced off rehabilitation camp that was his new home. She told me it was a beautiful letter. My 13-year-old daughter wrote out the bible verse suffer the little children to me – I had sadly not thought of that angle – Caroline had been called home – and I marvelled at the beauty of my daughter. One thing that turned like a page inside my heart was the thinking that my troubled son was a heartbreak. Heartbroken was the reserved term for permanent separation of death. Thankfully I had yet to know heartbreak. I knew I would not say or think I am heartbroken again for societal problems or personal betrayals. This brings me back around to forgiveness, making no excuses, having no regrets, forgiving the guilty and living with malice towards none.