Guilt and regret
When Sheila Murphy’s* father, Jack, died six years ago, her grief was mixed with a heavy dose of self-blame. Jack was, in some ways, larger than life: A small businessman in New Brunswick, he was admired by many for his strong involvement in volunteerism at home and abroad. But with his family he could be short-tempered and critical, especially with Murphy’s mother, although his children didn’t escape unscathed, either.
“When Mom died, I’ll admit that I thought, Why did you take the good one?” says Murphy. And from that point onward, she says, she didn’t always treat her father well. She distanced herself from him, didn’t invite him to family get-togethers and had little patience for his health problems. It wasn’t until he died that she realized there might have been a better way to deal with her frustration with him than simply “shutting out a lonely old man. You think you’ll have the time to fix it later, but when they’re gone, they’re gone,” she says now.
Making amends
Like Murphy, now 45, not many of us make it to this age without some regrets about how we’ve behaved. Maybe you cheated on your mate or betrayed a friend. Maybe you fumbled through motherhood. (Okay, without question, if you’re a mother, some fumbling was involved!) Maybe you battled addiction — and in the process, did things you’d simply rather forget.
Perhaps, like Briony Tallis, the character in the award-winning novel and film Atonement, your mistakes and misjudgments caused irreparable harm. Her lie sent her sister’s boyfriend to jail and then to his death in war, an error made at 13 years old that she spent the rest of her life trying to atone for. Or, like many more of us, perhaps your failings simply made you feel as if you hadn’t lived up to your image of who you want to be: that you were petty when you strive to be generous, dishonest when you try to be truthful, an imperfect friend when you wish to be steadfast, a flawed parent when you’d rather be your child’s hero. Whatever the case, is it okay to eventually let yourself off the hook? Or is self-forgiveness just a way of dodging responsibility for your actions?
