Why was I so cold and unloving to my dying husband?

DEAR BEL,

A RECENT widow’s letter in your column started thoughts I’ve been putting aside for over three years.

I lost my husband Tom in November 2016 after a long struggle with a cancer. We were married for 42 years and had a daughter with special needs and a son. They were both in their 30s when Tom died and although our daughter couldn’t understand her father’s plight, her carers brought her to see him in his final days.

I hope this gave him comfort, as they were always very close. Our married son came to the hospital and spent many hours there to support both his father and me.

During these last days I wasn’t noble . . . like Ann, I too hated illness and found it impossible to be loving and sympathetic. After years trying to be optimistic, I couldn’t accept he was going to die.

I didn’t spend time telling him how much I loved him, because at that stage, to be honest, I thought my love had died some years ago. He would have expected me to hold him and whisper loving things, but I just didn’t.

My brother-in-law did ask if I wanted some time alone with Tom, but I said ‘no’, and have felt guilty ever since. I found life with Tom quite exasperating at times and thought about leaving on several occasions.

After his death, I felt relieved he was out of pain and discomfort — and also in some way that I didn’t have to worry about him.

But I have now met someone I’m very fond of and find myself constantly racked with guilt over my actions towards Tom at the end.

He would have expected me to be much more sympathetic, instead of my ‘Come on, we’ll get through this’ attitude. In a way, it was my way of coping with what I knew to be a hopeless situation.

I am hoping to come to terms with all this eventually, but it doesn’t get easier — in fact, it’s getting worse.

At the moment, I have too much time to dwell on the past and now (in my early 70s) I feel I’m running out of time to be happy. How can I learn to live again? Am I wallowing in self-pity?

Maybe I need to pull myself together, but it’s easier said than done. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life harking back to the past.

ELEANOR

Often it is said that grief is the other side of love; what’s not so often acknowledged is that guilt is, too.

It lurks there, never quite washed away by tears, the knowledge that if we had the time over again we might behave differently — be kinder, more patient, more attentive. Visit Mum more often. forgive the brother who wronged us before the last goodbye.

Your regrets and guilt are so common — in fact, in the past two weeks I’ve received two other emails which prove the point.

Here is Mrs VH, whose husband died last year after a long illness: ‘If only I’d known it was his last day on earth . . . afterwards I would remember in minute detail the terrible events that led up to his death, and my failings.

‘I was so busy caring for him, I forgot to try to make life nice for him, play his favourite music, entertain him. I was sometimes bad-tempered, when he kept getting up, even though he was prone to falling over . . . ’

And here is Mrs JV, mourning the father who died in a hospice last year, feeling so guilty because she’d had enough and gone home, now telling me: ‘I live with the guilt because all Dad wanted to do was go home and I told him he couldn’t. Because I saw him on the friday and said, “See you tomorrow” but didn’t . . . why didn’t I stay? Or

go back? Or at least go back after? Why do I now feel so bad?’

I can no more supply an ‘answer’ to these two women than I can to you; nevertheless I’ll try to speak to all three. The first thing to understand is that such futile regrets are a destructive chewingup of your energy and need to be controlled. Much as we would all like to rewrite scripts for various parts of the past, it can’t be done.

Best to say, ‘Ouch, that was bad, it was a tough time — and on the other hand . . .’ (followed by a good thought.)

Nobody can possibly expect to change a whole personality simply because death is on the horizon.

If you are a brisk person, that is how you will remain; if you have reservations about a marriage, you can’t switch past difficulties for adoration overnight. It doesn’t work that way.

The only way to ‘change’ the past is to flip your perception of it. That’s where focusing on the positive thoughts comes in. So Mrs VH must consciously think of all the care she did give her husband, and Mrs JV must focus on the fact that what she left her father’s deathbed for was to return to her three children. In other words, love.

And I believe it is love that makes you remember your daughter’s visit to her father (which you must have organised) and to believe it made him happy.

Whoever thought that love is uncomplicated? Who can expect to turn into Florence Nightingale if you hate illness? All any of us can do is our best — and then be glad of that.

So please try to remember what was good in the past you shared with your husband and now look forward. You can start to ‘learn to live again’ by believing me when I shout: ‘It is never too late to be happy!’

I wish you joy with a new person who will help that process.

Importantevents—whetherserious,happyor unfortunate—donotchangeaman’ssoul, theymerelybringitintosharprelief,justasa stronggustofwindrevealsthetrueshapeofa treewhenitblowsoffallitsleaves. From Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (born Kiev 1903, died Auschwitz 1942)