~ Midi Playing is - Is There Life Out There? ~

~ Often the test of courage is not to die, but to live ~

Laura, in her confession, explained to the police she had smothered her infant daughter six years before and her crime had gone undetected. Now, she was ready o pay for what she had done.

The wheels of justice ran their normal course. She was held in jail where she sat uncomplaining until her court date. But once in court a strange thing happened. No one who knew Laura ~ and that included her husband ~ believed a word of her confession.

After listening to the circumstances surrounding her child’s death as outlined by the police, as well as speaking to her family, it became apparent that Laura’s child had not been the victim of foul play but rather had died of sudden infant death syndrome, commonly called crib death. This type of death annually kills about ten thousand American babies aged three weeks to five months. In most instances, the baby, seemingly healthy, is put to bed and discovered dead of no apparent cause some hours later. Doctors currently are working with the theory that death is caused by a noninfectious virus. Laura was very fortunate that the court appointed a conscientious man to act as her attorney. He began to question whether his client had indeed killed her baby. Querying doctors, he insisted on a complete psychiatric work-up for her. Even now, several years after her trial, the attorney, who was specialized in criminal law for twenty-five years, remembers Laura very clearly, primarily because of her uncertainty. “She was the most passive client I have ever defended,” he said. “It was almost as if she was disinterested in the proceedings. She made absolutely no demands upon me. She never insisted on having her ‘rights’ protected as most clients do. She just sat there and everything was ‘all right’ as far as my handling the case was concerned.”

At her trial, Laura stood thin and drawn, clad in blue jeans and a white blouse. Her face was pale and she had such a blank look in her eyes that it was almost painful to see. Her family was present and gave evidence as to how devoted a mother she was. Her former husband, from whom she had parted with some bitterness and who had subsequently remarried, testified that she was a good mother and in his opinion incapable of killing the daughter she adored. Yet Laura told police she had picked up a pillow and smothered the child. The case against her was ultimately dismissed when the autopsy report was admitted as evidence. It clearly indicated the child was not smothered.

Nearly as tragic as the misguided confession was Laura’s reaction to the dismissal of charges against her. Although tears ran down her cheeks, her eyes still held their dead vacant look. Her lawyer believes it just wasn’t enough for the courts to exonerate her. Laura would continue to feel responsible for her child’s death until she could cleanse herself of her feelings of self-blame. He said that while researching for her defense he came across several similar examples of parents who were convinced they killed their babies but actually had not. His view was substantiated in a study of the psychiatric toll of the sudden infant death syndrome, in which some letters from deeply anguished parents were included. In one letter, a mother told everyone she had smothered the child, despite a coroner’s report to the contrary.

Psychiatrists say this is a fantasy that cannot be resolved until the person is willing to explore why he feels the death was his fault. Since in crib death there is no visible cause, almost always there is a police inquiry. Regardless of how the questions are asked, whether gently by an understanding officer or perhaps more brutally, the results of the police contact is an intensification of the parents’ feeling of guilt.

In general, according to the infant death study, psychiatric personnel have found an autopsy can be concrete assistance to parents trying to cope with the death of their seemingly healthy infant. An autopsy report can ease anxieties about whether or not they were careless. It can ease fears about whether the baby choked due to their improper attention. Parents sometimes even fear the baby cried itself to death, and express guilt because they failed to look in on the child. None of these fears is usually grounded in fact, but that does not make it less real or less painful to parents unable to shake their guilt feelings.

An unfortunate aspect of crib death is the fear parents experience if they have another baby. One mother said she watched her second child like a hawk until the child was two years old ~ well beyond the crib-death danger period, as she certainly knew. She simply could not relax until the baby was safely passed what she considered a hazardous period. She says she slept only fitfully, if at all during the night, was irritable and exhausted around her husband, and is just now becoming convinced her baby will live. One explanation for the unfounded self-blame by crib-death parents is what can be best described as a broad cultural guilt. We have been taught from infancy that parents love children. Nowhere in the idealized version children are given of parenting are they told mothers and fathers can love their offspring and still at times feel anger and resentment toward them. Yet, in nearly all families these motions are felt.

The founder of a center for the study of death and dying points out there is some anger in all loving relationships. Perhaps with a baby anger is a result of having one’s freedom curtailed or being awakened out of a sound sleep to feed the infant. This certainly is not an unusual emotion. But should the child die, this resentment, which was certainly not unfounded and was well within the bounds of a normal parent-child relationship, turns to self-blame. From there, a parent will sometimes become convinced the child died because the parent felt such negative things as resentment and annoyance. “After all,” such a parent might think, “it was wrong of me to feel anger or annoyance even though the baby would wake me just as I had finally fallen asleep. I guess I didn’t love my baby enough, or the ‘right’ way.” Psychiatrists claim such tortuous thinking is not at all uncommon in a bereaved parent.

Guilt as defined by Webster is the act or state of having done a wrong or committed an offense. Since all people sin, err, think bad thoughts, lie occasionally, or commit other assorted misdeeds large and small, there are times all of us can feel guilty. But when a child dies, unless we allow room for logic, such misdeeds can serve as a starting point upon which to blame oneself for the death.

One man, who went through his own personal hell after his son died, felt his experience in the area of guilt was so important to share that he volunteered his story, with the understanding that his privacy would be respected.

”You know, it probably starts with the Ten Commandments,” he told me. “Where it says ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ I guess that’s a basic belief of every faith and it is taught to you as a kid. You are not supposed to break the commandments. When you get married you swear to forsake all others too. But my wife and I just couldn’t make it as well as I thought we would and I began playing around. Then our son developed cancer. I watched his agony and couldn’t handle it. Aside from seeing someone I loved in pain, I began to believe my son ~ my only boy ~ was suffering because I had sinned. God was punishing me. When my boy died, I just could not be comforted. Or, rather, I would not let myself be comforted because I felt responsible for what happened. My smoking went up to three packs a day and I couldn’t tell my wife why I became even more distant than before. I finally reached the point where I felt I was cracking up and I went to a psychiatrist. It took three years of twice-weekly sessions for me to understand I wasn’t responsible for my boy’s death. I can live with it now and I understand he didn’t die because of me. But sometimes when I am very blue or tired the thought creeps back into my mind. When it does I pull myself up short and go back to thinking logically. One thing though, my wife and I are close again and I have stopped cheating.”

One woman in a small town bore an illegitimate child some thirty years ago, instead of giving it up for adoption, as was commonly done then, she kept the girl and reared her in the face of society’s criticism. Well, the mother eventually married, as did the daughter. But the daughter died soon afterward following gallbladder surgery. It has been two years and the mother still regards her daughter’s death as a punishment for her “sin.” Wiped out completely from her mind are the years of love and caring she gave the child. All she can think now is that her daughter died because the mother had engaged in premarital sex.

These parents are victims of an idea implanted in most of us from early childhood. That idea is magical thinking. We were taught that as youngsters if you were good and wished for things bad enough your wishes would come true. If you were good and wished for Santa to bring you a certain something at Christmas he would. The toothfairy would leave money under your pillow. Spending a lifetime with this idea, we are grounded in the notion that our wishes and our deeds have some bearing on major events. While this can hold true in most human endeavors, it is rarely the case in matters of life and death. We may wish for a new car or home and take the necessary steps to acquire them. You may wish for a summer vacation or winter ski trip. We may wish for happiness or love. In many circumstances we have it within our power to take the necessary steps whether they be at work or in our social lives to bring about the things for which we hope.

But generally in life and death matters we are stymied. Here is the most crucial of all things we find ourselves powerless to achieve what we want. Your wishes were not granted. You should not view this as a judgment upon yourself.

There are many number of tragic cases, however, where bereaved parents feel just that. They are convinced their own sins set the stage for their child’s death. Promiscuity, adultery, underhanded financial dealings, a lack of believe in God ~ in short, any breaking of the Ten Commandments with which most of us are taught can set up obsessions that can lead to disaster if a child dies. Often times, parents pass a self-imposed judgment that is not a function of the situation. One such example concerns the father who had quarreled with his son over a dirty garage and an unmade bed and the boy’s failure to do his homework. In general, a most unsatisfactory morning passed between the two. Three hours later, the boy was dead, the passenger in a car hit by an oncoming truck at a busy intersection. The father for several years was unable to come to terms with his own lack of responsibility in his son’s death. After all, he had felt both anger and resentment toward his son. And parents, he reasoned, are not supposed to feel that way. Therefore the boy died because of the father’s hostility. It was all the father’s fault. Again, magical thinking.

Some parents carry a burden of guilt that is fostered by their failure in the role of “protector” placed upon them by society. One such case is that of a young boy who drowned while his parents were painting a summer cottage. They had left a baby-sitter in charge of him, a usually competent young woman who turned away from her charge for a few minutes to chase the family dog that had gotten lose. While she was gone, the boy went into the water over his head and she found him floating dead. The parents, unable to stop blaming themselves, have since sold their cottage ~ a source of pleasure for them and their four surviving children. When there are deep seated feelings of guilt, it is easier to cope with a child’s death from a physical ailment than from an accident.

Some doctors maintain parents are often able to regard heart disease, leukemia, or bone cancer, for example, as foreign invaders over which they had no control. They can more readily accept the fact that they were not to blame for the death of their child versus one that died from an accident. An accidental death often have them asking themselves the question ~ Should I have given Jimmy the car? Allowed him to take the boat out? Or allowed him to ride his bike in the street? With cancer they feel that they are victims too because they have endured the pain of watching their child suffer.

In other words, when a child dies by accident, parents are likely to feel guilty because of their poor decision-making. But we more readily recognize our lack of control over disease. There should be no guilt feelings if you left your son or daughter remain as normal as they could be. Yes, Lyn was feeling guilty after Jenny died because she wanted to know if she had done the right thing by not putting Jenny on a respirator...but how normal would have that been for Jenny? She did what she felt was right...she now knows she made the right decision.

Perhaps no parent can match the pain of guilt with the feelings of those whose child has committed suicide. Where did I fail? How did I fail? Could I have prevented this? What kind of person can I be if my own child would do this to get away from me? I didn’t pay enough attention. I paid too much attention. All these guilt-ridden thoughts run through the minds of parents when a child commits suicide. Rarely, without therapy, does a parent think. Where did he (the child) fail? How did she fail? Could he have prevented this? What kind of person could she have been, and so on? Dr. Bruce Danto, psychiatrist and head of Detroit’s Suicide Prevention Center, says that, along with the feelings of guilt, there is an unconscious resentment toward having been electively and publicly abandoned by a son or daughter who, in the minds of the parents, catastrophically showed that their love was not enough. In his work with parents who must learn to deal with a child’s voluntary death, Dr. Danto claims group interaction between people who have undergone similar experiences is most beneficial. Also, he maintains, people should work at overcoming the socially unacceptable idea of speaking ill of the dead. “In effect, someone who kills himself has copped out,” he says. Danto claims siblings suffer more when a brother or sister has committed suicide than from any other death because they too feel guilt and personal failure. “Kids are the most lied-to group of people next to the Internal Revenue Service,” he says. “Rather than grieving and working out the problems as a family, they are generally shunted away and almost never told the truth.”

He says it is not inappropriate to be angry with the dead, especially when trying to understand suicide at the same time you try to explain it to your surviving children. Although he cautions you must always know your child before offering any explanation, feeling anger when someone has taken such an “unfair” way out. The theory here is to nip in the bud as many guilt feelings as possible and to remove areas of personal fault-finding. The main thing is dealing with the surviving family members of a suicide is to keep an open exchange. Don’t suppress the expression of legitimate negative feelings about your child if he committed suicide.

One couple whose son shot himself has worked through many problems. What has not been handled is the feeling that had he been disciplined more firmly as a child, he might not have gone to drugs and ultimately to his death. But it is important for every parent to remember that if they were intended to function with perfect hindsight their eyeballs would be at the back of their heads. When a child is dead it is imperative to remember just where your eyeballs are located. Hindsight does no good for the dead child. Things can no longer be undone. Therefore, it is nothing more than exercise of futility.

Reviewing mistakes is of less than no value when reliving the time spent with your now dead child, unless you can use some new-found knowledge if rearing other children. A caution here which cannot be overlooked: Beware of the backlash your grief may unleash. If you were too strict with the dead child do not suddenly become so liberal that all rules are suspended. The same is true in reverse. People logically should not blame themselves for things they did not know they were mishandling. But when a child dies of suicide or by the use of drugs, it is almost impossible not to think about what could have been done differently.

It is almost inevitable for mothers and fathers to experience some sense of having failed in such cases. Whether the child took to drugs because of peer pressure or to escape reality ~ or even because he or she was convinced of the immortality of one’s youth ~ parents almost always think: What could we have done differently? It is essential for parents faced with this tragedy to disavow themselves of this idea, this sense of having failed. Not everything is within your control. Often things are beyond your handling, your coping, your correcting. Try to understand and accept the concept that perfect parenting is a role beyond realistic human capability.

It may help to remember: “I did the best I was able to do in the job of rearing my child. I had no training and by trial and error I did the best I could.” Remember, too, a person’s “best” may vary from day to day depending on life’s other pressures and involvements.

When trying to overcome unjustified guilt, just as in many areas of bereavement, a compassionate third ear can lend enormous support. Not all of you have had the benefit of guiding doctors, nor can we always seek psychiatric counseling, but nearly everybody has a friend or relative or neighbor to speak with. Find a person ~ and do not constantly alternate the person ~ whose judgment you trust. You will probably discover that the feedback you get will enable you to see more clearly that your child did not die because you sinned, were neglectful, or were a bad parent. You may even discover, if you really choose to probe, why you feel guilty for an event, so tragic, that you did not bring about.