Many, perhaps even most, deaths involve some measure of human error. These deaths appear, in perfect hindsight of grief, to have been absolutely avoidable. They weren’t caused by a bolt of lightning, flood, or an earthquake, they were caused in some part by the action or perhaps inaction of another human.

Grief becomes very focused and complicated in the most personal ways when we know, or believe that we know exactly who to blame for our loss and the resulting grief. Grief from day one is a cold dark place that has been emptied of the warmth of our lost loved one. In darkness, anger flames up easily and we are drawn to the light and heat of the fires of our anger.

I have written a lot about anger being a cancer of the human soul that consumes love. One of the first things I ask people who struggle with grief is “what’s making you angry about this loss?”. The simple reason for that is that I have come to understand that when we remain angry in grief, we fuel that fire with pieces of our own soul and we hollow our soul out until it is a thin empty shell.

In a way, anger in grief is like being lost at sea on a broken wooden ship in deep winter. We make the decision to build a fire, and start burning the deck chairs for light and warmth.  As time goes on, we have burnt all the loose pieces of wood, so we start taking wood from the structure of the ship to stay warm. All of our energy goes to maintaining the fire, little of our energy goes to finding a way back to safety. Months or even years later, we have eaten everything we had on board, we have burnt the entire ship except the hull, and we are still adrift in a cold dark place.

In grief, this same process happens because we took found comfort and took refuge huddled in the warmth of our anger.

There is probably no human error that is harder to forgive than the suicide of a loved one. I first came to understand anger as a cancer of the soul after my brother’s suicide twenty-four years ago. My parents both found unquenchable anger in the loss of their youngest child. I would speak to them on the annual days, birthdays, death days, and holidays. Over decades, I could sense that their souls were more and more fragile, and the anger would flare more easily. I would bring love and understanding hoping to extinguish the anger for them. They spent emotional energy stoking that fire; I eventually came to accept that they would die with that anger still burning and they never did let it go until their own death brought peace.

In the process of, my grief for my brother’s suicide, I taught myself to forgive him for the mistake of taking his own life, and to forgive him for the irreparable damage he left behind, and for the scars left on those of us who found ways to heal.

Forgiveness is in fact a selfish thing we do. We forgive others to better our own life. We forgive others to leave the responsibility for their wrongs to those who have wronged us. We forgive others to relieve ourselves from the self-destructive anger we host in the fires of anger eating our own soul from the inside. We forgive so that we don’t hate, so that we can love life again. We forgive to find life again after loss.

Five years after my brother’s suicide, our twenty year old son died in a firefighter water rescue training accident in our small community of 5200 souls. Not one, but a long series of many human errors set the stage for the death of a firefighter. The chaotic random events of the Universe put our son on the boat that would kill him, in the seat of the only firefighter ejected from and killed by the boat during a pointless and unplanned demonstration of a high risk maneuver, at the sole choice of the young firefighter driving the boat.

It was a national news event in a small town. I was inexperienced with media, but the media needed a parent or loved one to comment. Home from the hospital the night before, a sleepless night crying as a couple, crying with friends of James in the driveway before dawn, a house filled with caring friends and family, and before noon a wall of media at the end of the driveway wanting a statement.

Honestly, grieving my brother’s suicide had taught me well. Had I not had that experience, my words would have been destructive, angry and would probably have ruined more lives than needed to be ruined that day. Media these days seeks anger; the media prefers a grieving parent in anguish to a calm forgiving rational understanding.

I spoke about love: James’ love of life, his many academic and social successes that included firefighting. I spoke about the love James had for his fellow firefighters. I spoke about the love of community that had James helping to raise funds for the boat that was needed to save life, the boat that ironically took the life most important to us. I spoke of finding the causes of the accident, but also sharing the blame for any human errors across our community and the obligation to learn for the mistakes to prevent future deaths.

I did that with a soul full of the immediate fires of anger, knowing that if I opened the gates of my anger it would catch like wildfire and spread to the souls of many others. Privately I asked the driver of the boat to remain as a firefighter, to become the best trained and safest firefighter in the community, to save lives where he could with knowledge and skill that he lacked in this accident. He did all that, and tears later, he married and had children and bought a house just up the street from ours. Some or all of that might not have happened without forgiveness.

There is a dangerous age for young men, between approximately ages 15-25, when the addictive powerful hormone of testosterone flows freely and the brain has not yet fully developed critical thinking skills. Irrational macho bravado and impulsive unreliable ego driven decision making can combine in any instant to cause more avoidable deaths by human error. The car full of kids driving too fast leaves the road and kills some or all occupants. The skier feeling peer pressure who tries to tackle a slope beyond his skills and is crippled or dead from that decision.

When the death of a child is caused by suicide or their own human error, or the human errors of a group of friends, the fires of anger are especially intense and doubly destructive. The longer they burn, the deeper the damage, and in many cases the anger effective ends much of the possibility for joy in your own life. In these cases I look at intent and try to respect the intent as a guide.

My brother’s suicide was intended only to end his own pain, not to cause the resulting pain among his family and friends. Our son’s death happened in his pursuit of giving back to his community, the best possible of human traits. I respected that by trying to do as little damage as possible the the community and friends that James loved.

So, as you grieve a loved one lost to human error, ask yourself if there was intent of damage to your life as a survivor or was this death an accident that unintentionally wasn’t prevented. Minimize the accidental collateral damage to your life by forgiving those who have been human in their errors.

 Be well, heal a broken soul by seeking the glue of love to reconnect the shattered pieces of your soul, enjoy the gift of today’s dawn by forgiving the darkest of days past.

After promising to be more attentive and prolific writing on this blog, I appeared to fall off the face of the Earth. I have a good excuse, as well as a fresh journey through grief where no one died and it all ended pretty well.

Achilles had his heel; apparently my tragic weakness might just be my eyes. In 2020, during Covid I was losing visual acuity in my right eye. I’m of that age, and we’d been watching cataracts develop slowly, so a referral for evaluation. Then we moved in the middle of Covid, and re-started the months long process of finding an ophthalmologist. It wasn’t a cataract, it was something called an epi-retinal membrane and needed a retinal surgeon’s skills. More month of following, evaluating and finally in Fall 2022 I had surgery. The results weren’t stellar. I have a full field of vision, but fluid build-up in the critical parts of the retina leave that eye very challenged for reading.  No disability, great vision in the left eye. In Fall of 2023 I had cataract surgery on both eyes, all went well and I had the best vision I had had in years, thanks to my “good” left eye. April 2024 and annual retinal follow-up disclosed no issues of concern.

A weekend away with friends and I golfed worse than usual. Driving home I struggled to read small signs. Monday I woke up and struggled to read a computer screen. Emergency eye clinic disclosed seven issues with my “good” eye which had formed its own epi-retinal membrane. Friday a huge amount of laser work was done to reduce the chance of a full tear of the retina in preparation for surgery. Follow up three weeks later and I was nearly blind in my left eye, could read only large test with my bad eye, so quickly losing functions of daily life. My epi-retinal membrane had advanced at the fastest pace my doc had seen in ten years, so I jumped to the top of the list and was operated on August 29^th.

After this surgery, it takes a week or two before basic vision comes back. No pain, just inconvenience, physical limitations, some physical irritation and lots of emotional irritation.

It’s been a full blown grieving process on a roller coaster of fear and hope. Losing the ability to drive is minor, but I spend a bunch of time writing and blogging, so I felt isolated. There is an aura of positivity around you, but it’s sometimes hard to feel that from inside the problem.

I preach that anger is a cancer of the human soul that consumes your love of life. But anger is essential to defining grief, so on any great change in life I give myself ten minutes of anger to define what I must or might need to grieve. My initial comment when this second eye epi-retinal membrane was diagnosed was that this was my worst nightmare. Within minutes, I had slapped myself and realized that I had had and survived worse nightmares when I lost a brother to suicide and later our son to a firefighter training accident.

I believe that, in life, we should hope for the best but be prepared for the worst just in case. I know someone who lost most of his vision, and gained enough of it back to function pretty well after more than a dozen eye surgeries. He found inspiration that if I had survived the loss of our son, he could survive the loss of his vision.

Now twenty days post-op, the results so far have been pretty spectacular. I’m rolling back font sizes and screen magnification and writing this comfortably. When this hit, I was in the middle of building a deck, paradoxically I could work slowly with vastly diminished eyesight and mostly finished the deck before surgery. It will be weeks before I can get back to it, but having that project was exhausting and encouraging and it kept me busy doing something. I developed methods to measure and cut accurately without great vision, I adapted. Now that I can see it, it’s maybe some of my best work ever. It kept my mind off the possibility for worse outcomes.

I often say that once you’ve lost a child and figured out how to love life again, the rest of your life will be easier. Even facing near blindness and a lack of function was easier than I expected. I’ve answered all of the self-centered “why me?” questions before, and am comfortable that life is just chaotic and random and lacks evil intent.

I am now building a visual bucket list of road trips to visually spectacular places that I really want to see before I die, or perhaps before another eye crisis makes sight impossible. Because, much like losing a loved one, I know that I can visit memories that have been important parts of loving life even if I can’t touch or see them. It’s important to make those moments happen in your life, to populate your soul with positive emotions and experiences while you can. And, in grief it’s never too late to visit and activate the memories of our loved ones.

I will once again commit to trying to write more often, barring another Achilles issue.  Thanks for your patience.

Be well and peaceful, build love in your life, for your life and the lives of your loved ones.