I FEEL GUILTY OVER HUBBY’S FUNERAL

PEOPLE say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but to me it just brings up feelings of guilt.

I gave my grandchildren, aged two and five, books for Christmas. Looking back, I’m thinking: ‘Why didn’t I sit and read with them when they visited, instead of playing board games with the adults?’ They are so young and will not be so ready to sit with Grandma when they are older.

I feel so guilty that when my husband died in April (not totally unexpected, as he had been ill for many years), I feel I did not give him the send-off he deserved. I very nearly didn’t get flowers for the cremation and left it to the last minute to arrange an order of service.

We did not talk together much about how we wanted our funerals to be, other than cremation. But, even then, I chose a crematorium that was more convenient to me and the mourners — not the one he had said he would be happy with. I chose the music I liked, not thinking of what he might have wanted.

I wake at night and think of all the things I didn’t do. He was such a kind and gentle man. We had been married for almost 50 years.

Yes, we had our disagreements over the years, but I feel that I let him down so badly at the end and find it hard to forgive myself. I do feel better writing about this.

PAM

Setting down thoughts in a proper letter or email can, indeed, be helpful — especially these days, when too

many people think texts and messages on social media count as real communication.

Anyway, you surely are not alone in feeling weighed down by regret after a bereavement. It hasn’t even been a year, so it’s vital to understand that grief can break over you in waves, even many years after a loss.

Never mind that your husband had been ill for a long time; it’s quite likely you were still in denial about the inevitable. Perhaps you were simply too tired at the end to face the thoughtful organisation of the ‘right’ cremation. I think you can — and should — make excuses for yourself. Surely he would hate it that you are so consumed with pointless guilt? How many of us set down, in a considered document, how we would like our final rites of passage to be conducted?

Ritual is important and even the simplest cremation service can serve as a meaningful transition from death to the continuation of life. The right piece of music, a passage or poem the dead person loved: such things matter. That’s why it’s a wise decision for all of us to write down our preferences while we are living.

One way of coping with the sort of fruitless guilt you describe is to devise a small private ritual. You could set up your husband’s photograph in a corner, put a lit candle before it, play music he loved and just sit for a while and talk to him.

Far more significant, it seems to me, is your regret about not paying enough attention to your grandchildren. That is something that can be acted upon. Why make it into a Big Thing?

Just be sure to see plenty of them in the coming months, and play with and read to them as much as they want. Don’t let pointless self-flagellation become self-absorption.