If I Ever Gave a TED Talk, This Would Be It

On the afternoon of November 7^th, 2010, I took my wife, Anne, to the hospital emergency room.  Her flu symptoms had gotten progressively worse during the week prior.  She was not improving and something had to be done.

She underwent numerous tests.  The tests did not offer any conclusions.  She received some intravenous fluids and felt somewhat better.  She was started on a broad-spectrum antibiotic and things were looking up.  I had just started a new job and was focused on getting to work in the morning.  She was admitted to the hospital and was resting comfortably.  I was assured that things would be fine.  I went home to bed.

At 4:20 a.m. on November 8^th, the phone rang.  When the nurse had checked Anne at 4 a.m., she was unresponsive.  I needed to come right away.  Over the next week we discovered that her flu was actually a staph infection.  The infection had landed on some organs, vegetated and spewed fragments into her bloodstream. Some large fragments had collided with her mid-brain and damaged her irreversibly.  She was in a vegetative state.

Over the next ten days, we tried everything to bring her back.  In the end, however, we removed the life support machinery.  We took her home on November 18^th.  She died two days later, at the age of fifty one.  We had been married thirty-one years.

I knew that somehow I was responsible.  If only I had responded sooner.  If only I had done something more.  If only I had paid more attention.  Somehow she was dead because I didn’t do enough.

People told me that I needed to forgive myself.  I reject the possibility of forgiving myself.  More than that, I find the attempt to do so destructive.

It’s as if I am two people.  I am Victim Lowell, the one who was wronged.  And I am Offender Lowell, the one who committed the wrong.

So Offender Lowell must seek out Victim Lowell and offer a heartfelt apology.  Offender Lowell must then ask Victim Lowell for forgiveness.  Offender Lowell must find a way to make restitution to Victim Lowell.  Only then can the two estranged selves be merged again into one.

When I describe things that way, it all sounds more than a little silly.  And more than a little crowded in there as well.  Worse yet, self-forgiveness turns the problem into the solution.  First, I couldn’t get to the people I had actually wronged.

When my wife died, I experience tremendous guilt and shame.  It was so intense at some points that I simply wanted to die to be free of it all.  But I didn’t feel guilty because I had hurt myself.  I didn’t feel ashamed because I had failed myself.  I was broken into pieces because I didn’t save her from dying.  I was shattered because I couldn’t give my boys back their mother.  I was a wreck because Anne’s mom no longer had a daughter, and Anne’s brother no longer had a sister.

I didn’t need self-forgiveness.  I needed forgiveness from all the real victims of my failures.  That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I could not get.  Of course, they said there was nothing to forgive.  They said I had done everything I could to save her.  They said I had nothing to feel guilty about.  They thought they were helping me.

They were right, at least in technical and medical terms.  But because they said there was nothing to forgive, I found myself at a dead-end.  I know it’s a bad pun, but I have learned that I have to be able to smile at this sometimes.  They said I didn’t need to be forgiven.  Of course, they were wrong.  They didn’t feel the need to forgive me.  But I still needed to be forgiven.

Worst of all, the one I need to hear from the most—well, Anne was dead.  So that door was closed.

For a while I thought there might be something to this self-forgiveness stuff after all.  I was, of course, the only one I could get my hands on.  I was the only one I could really accuse.  Everyone really had done their best as far as I could tell.  So I must be the one at fault.

How was I ever going to figure out how to forgive myself?  I was the one who had done something wrong.  But I wasn’t really the one who had been wronged.  I had no problem finding Offender Lowell.  Victims were also easy to find.  But Victim Lowell was not among them.

What I found was that seeking self-forgiveness is just a way to keep some distance from myself.  If I could find Victim Lowell, then I could step back a bit from being Offender Lowell, and it might not hurt so much.  This is the real problem with self-forgiveness.  Terrible events can divide us into multiple selves.  And when I am a divided self, I don’t have to take as much responsibility for my actions.

I see this when I work with offenders and victims in restorative justice dialogues.  The offenders who don’t “get” restorative justice are those who have divided themselves into that terrible “Offender Me” of the past and the much kinder, gentler “Reformed Me” of the present.  That old Offender Me was certainly a terrible person, and I’m very sorry that I was ever associated with such a scoundrel.  But I am now a very different person.  I don’t even really remember what it was like to be Offender Me.

Once that division of self is accomplished, then it’s pretty easy for an offender to create an identity as Victim Me.  This is the real tragedy and comedy of some restorative justice dialogues.  The Offender—the one who has caused thousands of dollars in damage or changed a life through personal injury—that offender has divided him or herself into the old Offender Me and a new Victim Me.  The new Victim Me is more than a little irritated at being held responsible for the actions of that old Offender Me.  And the new Victim Me wonders why no one else can be as kind and gracious to Offender Me and I can be.

For me, self-forgiveness was a waste of time.  Self-acceptance is the ongoing task and challenge.  Did I really do the best I could to respond to Anne’s health crisis?  My answer depends on the day.  I don’t know for sure, and I’ll never know for sure.  I did what I did, and I did what I could.  I can’t change that, and I can’t change the outcome.  All of those events are part of who I am.  All those events are part of the history of the universe as it is.  I can accept the facts or resist the facts.  But I cannot change the facts.

Self-forgiveness does not produce any sort of resolution for me.  But I can work every day to accept myself as I am—fallible and faithful, limited and loving, horrified and hopeful.  I am one person with manifold experiences.  Having a unified sense of self is not something we discover.  Instead, having a unified sense of self is something we build day by day.  I was that person who did not save Anne.  I am that person who lives life after that loss. 

Now, I am that person who is incredibly blessed with a new and wonderful life.  I am privileged to be married again to the most wonderful woman on the planet.  I am that person who knows that terrible things happen and wonderful things are possible.  I am that person who knows you can’t get a new past, and that a miraculous future is still out there.

I am all of the people I have been, and all of the people I will become.  What about you?