My Dad passed in July. For nearly a week he would tell me he was having trouble catching his breath. He did not want to go hosp. I feel so overwhelming guilty because looking back, I had same symptoms and was hospitalized with pneumonia that past Feb (5 months before)! I should have realized what it was and how bad he felt. I ended up calling hosparus who put him on O2. which was great. BUT I feel guilty because I should have called soo much sooner! I was also the one to administer his hosparus medication . I watched as he took his last breath. I feel like I pushed him to die. How do you get rid of this guilt?
It was your dads time to leave this world for the next and NOTHING that you could have said or done would have changed that fact.
So I hope that you'll now seek out a good grief support group. Since your dad was under hospice care, they offer grief counseling free for a year, and the free support group Grief Share is also another good choice.
I wish you well in getting the help you need to properly grieve the loss of your dad, as being a parent myself, I know the last thing your dad would want is for you to be stuck with feelings of guilt, when in fact it was just his time to go.
God bless you.
Your father didn't wish to go to the hospital. Whether this shortness of breath was due to pneumonia or CHF or anything else--perhaps aging heart and lungs is the best guess, he didn't wish to go to the hospital.
You don't tell us your father's age, but the fact is that we all do die. And making yourself responsible for life and death is a sort of hubris in which you think you have some God-like powers that you simply don't possess.
It is often easier, grief counselors tell us, to BLAME or to be angry with someONE of someTHING, than to walk into and through grieving, which is so final.
Often we blame doctors, nurses, rehabs, ECFs.
And at times we go to the length of blaming ourselves.
Try to switch your G-words. Guilt means you caused something through evil intent and refused to fix it when you could have done so. Sorry. That's not you. Grief means you are in pain and sorrow and suffering loss and self-questioning. That is you.
Life is, when you think of it, one long litany of "if ONLY"s. If only I had this. If only I had that. But in the end, we all do die. We all will mourn.
Try to be kind to yourself in your sorrow. That's what you dad would have wanted of you and for you.
I wish you the best and am so sorry for your loss.