Guilt - Part 1

Part of the living with grief process involves living with guilt. I'll write a lot about this I suspect, which is why this particular post is called Part 1, of how many we shall see......could be a lot.

I'll start with the easy guilt, then eventually get into that deep guilt that involves tremendous shame and embarrassment. The easy guilt example for me is around house plants. Yup, house plants. Meagan had a whole interior sunroom devoted to plants. I laughingly called it the plant room. It had seating and furniture, but all sort of useless due to the profusion of plants everywhere (at least for a guy my size, Meagan could curl up pretty small). We struggled to maintain it during her long descent, and by the time Meagan died the plants weren't doing well. When I was in the immediate aftermath of death and soaked in grief, the last thing I wanted to do was take care of plants. Perhaps some would find the tending and care of plants therapeutic. Not me. It was another opportunity to have something die under my watch. I didn't know what they needed, nor wanted to be responsible for watering and feeding and actively promoting their demise through too much or not enough water, light, or nutrients.

So my sister and a friend did some culling. And I moved all the remaining plants but a couple outside - permanently. Not just in fair weather as in the past, but permanently. No hot house plants for me - they needed to make it outside like their outdoor plant cousins. Jungle rules.

I did allow a couple to stay in doors, which I have tended, despite ineptitude. A jade plant Meagan had for 30 years had a near death experience, but it has recovered, and now thrives, yes, inside the solarium (now repurposed as a sun room, with furniture and a human livable setting). As does one of her prized orchids, and some other curious plant (I have no idea what it is), but it seems to bloom continually and I am amused by its persistence, so keep watering it.

So the guilt. Guilty guilty guilty that all her lovely plants that went outdoors have pretty much bit the dust. I toss their husks in the yard recycle bin when I notice they have ceased operations, hoping their remnants wil serve as compost for a future plant tended more carefully by another. Guilty that the plant room meets my needs now as a sunroom, a place to read the paper when the day is nice but too cool to sit outside, or a place to hide when the house is full of young adults or the cleaning lady is vacuuming. Guilt that I'm slowly making this house my house, and even though I know she would be ok with it and want it for me, it still brings me pangs of guilt.

As much as I can write that last sentence, I know that there is one change in the house she would not like, and I'm lying if I write or say she'd be ok with it. It's not about plants - it's about her precious bathroom. The one with costume jewelry and hand painted shower curtain and quotes on the walls and jewel encrusted mirrors and all manner of bright baubles and treasures. It no longer exists, I did not want it to be a shrine, and it did not meet my needs as a guy's bathroom. So it's preserved in pictures only, and those will be bound into a book for kids and grandkids to remember Meagan's unique bathroom - a place of imagination and creativity and a testament to her artistic sensibilities and creative power. I feel guilty about getting rid of it. I don't think she'd approve. Even though I firmly believe she'd aprove of other house changes, such as the changed living room with the combination pool table/ping pong table as a place of socialization and gathering.

So as much as I live with grief, I live with guilt. It's always there too. I try to use it to really litmus test decisions I am contemplating, to make sure as best I can they are rooted in strong principles and things I care about, and not just doing it to make life easy or more convenient. I know some people who still have all their loved one's clothes and personal effects exactly they way they were at death, many months or years later. If that's what they need, that's good enough. If they were to get rid of it too soon, they'd be wracked with guilt. I got no guilt and a lot of pleasure out of giving away most of Meagan's clothes to friends and relatives, and nothing gave me more pleasure than to learn that one of her nieces was wearing Auntie Meagan's cowboy boots on Meagan's birthday.