Letting go of ‘what ifs’ and regrets

No matter how close you were to the person whose death you are now grieving, you feel some sort of regret over what you might have done differently when they were alive or what you could have experienced together had they lived. The “if-onlys”, and what we call the “would-a, could-a, should-a ’s” can paralyze you if you let them. “If only I had done this, if only I had done that,” may be the record played over and over in your mind. All of us live with some regret and guilt regarding the way we treated the person who died or was killed. You might have been the most supportive person through their illness, but you still wind up wondering what more you could have done. You find yourself feeling that you didn’t spend enough time with them or didn’t do a particular something they would have appreciated. You think maybe another operation would have worked. On the other hand, you think perhaps you shouldn’t have agreed to the operation they did have that came before their death. You must remember – you made decisions, which you felt were the most viable, from the choices you had when you made them. You cannot take them back and you cannot feel guilty about the outcome. Even if you had the same decision to make today, there is no certainty that the outcome would be different. Please remember that and draw comfort from it. Next, go to the park or the cemetery with a pad of paper. Write a letter about all the things that are bothering you in regards to their death. How it happened, what choices you made, what you wish you could change, what you are struggling with. You can do a lot of things within that letter. It is it is cathartic for your own benefit because it dumps all that pain out of your gut and you can now see it on paper. I encourage you to take this very important step when you are ready. It definitely hinders us from moving forward in our grieving badly about ourselves, about a situation that we perceive we could or couldn’t have changed yet still feel so angry and guilty ridden about. The process is to let go. Release all those feelings that are causing you to stay stuck.