Cancel that ticket!

Am working on a post for o2eBOOKSHELF about David Richo's insights on guilt & becoming an adult.   Did a little digging to get more background.

Sheez - do an online search of guilt & elderly and be amazed at the responses you get, all over the map.  From elderly guilt over ancient parenting issues to kids fretting they're not spending enough time with their parents/spouse/kids (free to pick more than one), to caregivers feeling inadequate to the task.  And on & on.  

Guilt isn't reserved for stereotypes.  In 2015, it seems everywhere as a sandwich generation gets squeezed between conflicting needs - often ending up feeling justifiably guilty about not paying enough attention to themselves! 

Maybe I was liberated from over booking guilt trips by growing up with parent who felt guilty about everyone's problems, including (especially) those that had nothing to do with her.  A strange trait that was impossible to miss, just as impossible to fathom.  Until a year or so beforel Mom died.

We were working on a Mindwalker e-mail that touched on her adored father.  As I tip tapped her dictation, was aware of a strange noise.  Turning to where Mom was sitting in a chair, just inside the computer studio door, it hit me that she was crying.

My mother didn't cry - ever.  Yet, there she was, great sobs wracking her body.  Wedged into her sobs was one sentence, repeated over & over - "I should have done more."

 

She should have done more to save her father, suffering from a deterioriating heart, from dying.  At nineteen, with her mother in Baltimore trying to fill his shoes as an estate manager & her father receiving care in Bryn Athyn.  She should have done more.  What more could she have done?

My gift - and Mom's - to anyone reading this posting ~ understand that you might not have the slightest clue why others act in the strange, something downright cluelessly destructive ways they do.  Experiencing Mom that night, it dawned on me that she made "I should be able to do more" a crucial part of her life mantra.  

 

Am no psychologist, have no training in counseling or even coaching, but even these untrained eyes can guess that for every day of her life, she tried to undo the fatal harm she did to her beloved father, failing to save him from his failing body.

Am grateful to have had that amazing illumination, to realize how far reaching the AH HA! went.  And goes.  

And to swear never ever to book a guilt trip ticket, not for myself, not for anyone in my life.  It's one way to nowhere.