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.