Let’s forgive them

Tim had been in the hospital for four nights. On the morning of the fifth day, we put in motion the decision we had already made together, to transfer him into hospice care within the hospital. 

When I reflect back on this decision, it’s impossible to recall the conversation around it. There certainly was no debate between us. Tim and I shared the same desires around end of life. We started the paperwork mid-morning anticipating he would be moved by early afternoon. By late afternoon, he had still not been transferred.

My frustration had grown as the day went on. I wanted to get Tim comfortable. I selfishly was also ready to have a cot next to him instead of a chair where I had been sleeping every night. I wanted a bathroom and a living room for our friends and family. I wanted to make sure Tim got the only thing he needed in his shockingly short list of choices.

Monica, Tim’s ex-wife, was standing on one side of his bed, and I on the other. Monica is a nurse, the mother of Tim’s daughter, a great human, and an important part of our life. She and I were discussing the mutual frustrations we had with the hospital staff that day.  Tim’s eyes were closed. He was resting but apparently lucid and listening to our conversation.  Without any movement or real intonation in his voice he simply said, “let’s forgive them.”

Tim was an all-around patient person. He was extremely tolerant and he was kind. And now, Tim was dying. Soon. So when he said, “let’s forgive them,” we did.

There are moments you know that you will never forget. I hear those words often for all kinds of reasons. Tim is the voice in my head if I’m ever feeling “wronged.”

Forgiveness feels big and heavy. There are situations, actions, and people that may have caused us great pain and suffering over a long period of time. Or there may have been an incident, that only took minutes. True forgiveness may be a process. One that can take years of work.

Have you ever said or heard, I forgive you, and it felt like empty words? I suppose that happens a lot. We might say things we can’t fully back up with our actions or true feelings. It might be easy to just say, I forgive you because it seems like a good place to start, to appease, or to begin mending something. But what is forgiveness exactly?

According to the American Psychological Association, it is accepting what happens. Ceasing to be angry. It is a voluntary transformation of your feelings, attitudes, and behavior so that you are no longer dominated by resentment and can express compassion, generosity, or the like to the person who wronged you.

When it comes to grief, there is a good chance that the person we may need to forgive is ourselves.  When we lose a loved one who has been a significant part of our life, there is a normal feeling that comes with the grief. Guilt. Sometimes people have guilt around what they did, sometimes it’s about what they didn’t do, or it may be how they wish they had done something differently right before the death.

We go about our lives as best we can. And yet, if we knew today was the last day of any of our loved one’s lives, honestly, wouldn’t we live it differently? Wouldn’t we spend the whole day making them laugh and showing them our love? Today, if you got a memo saying it was your loved one’s last day or your last day, wouldn’t you immediately do at least a few things differently? Yes. Of course! But this is not how we live. And so, we experience guilt after we lose someone.

The guilt we feel in grief is often not logical. But part of what we are doing is trying to make sense of what has happened. And we feel powerless. Death is not always orderly and it’s not fair. And we want our power back. Feeling guilt puts us in control.

The truth is we cannot change the death or anything that has occurred in our life with the one we have lost. So maybe the best we can do is remind ourselves, that we did the best with what we know. And going forward, we should continue to do the best with what we know.

If we are going to heal, we’ll need to find a way to forgive ourselves for wrongs, those that may be real, as well as the one’s that are probably imagined. I know for certain, that if Tim knew I had ever felt guilt after his death, he would not hesitate to say, forgive yourself.