My mom recently died after 2 weeks in the ICU from complications of falling down her steep, icy back steps in Feb after trying to walk down the steps and find her cat at night. She was only 63 but had a slew of health issues: diabetes type 1, asthma, osteoporosis, and high blood pressure amongst others. She broke 20/24 of her ribs in the fall. It ended up looking like she’d survive, then she got pneumonia and a condition called ARDS which ultimately led to her not getting enough oxygen in her blood and heart stopping and her death.
As her oldest son I always wanted to protect my mom, but I did so little to. She had fallen and broke bones before with her osteoporosis on 3 prior occasions in the past 5 years - none were when she was at home. She had asked me to help her sell her house so she could move to a single level apartment with less stairs but when covid happened I told her it would be best for her to stay in her house as the risk of transmission would he higher in apartments. I told her if she wanted to sell before she retired at 65 then she could arrange it on her own and I'd only commit to helping her move out. Over the past year I'd been working from home and my mom asked if I'd move in with her to help her run errands and slowly help her get her house ready for sale. I was absorbed in my own life and was worried I’d be called back to the office at some point, and I again declined.
Knowing what happened and what I know now, I feel like the worst son in the world. I knew she was at risk of falling at home and being there alone and I guess on some level I was ok with that or I wouldve done more. I thought if she fell at home and broke a couple of bones THAT would be the sign for me to move in with her, I just thought these things happened gradually. Truth be told I had plenty of signs as she’d fallen and broken bones on 3 prior occasions when she was out and about but I paid little thought to that. When I'd gone on some errands with her last time I saw her before the fall, she was getting short of breath after walking around the store for 10 min and had to sit down for awhile. I know as a type 1 DB shed had 2 incidents over the past 5 years where she passed out in public but she recovered relatively quickly from them.
I guess overall the point I'm trying to make is I had plenty of information that my mom wasn’t doing well before her fall, I knew I should’ve moved in with her at least during the winter and I didnt, and now she's dead. And I feel that if I’d been there with my mom, theres a very good chance she’d still be alive today. I wouldve likely been the one she sent to look for the cat, not her. I’d done it before while visiting her. I feel responsible for my own beloved mothers death, and there's nothing worse in the world that you could do to me. It's been 3 months now and I keep waiting each day to feel some sort of peace or relief from these thoughts, but if it comes its only temporary and it never lasts and I’m back to feeling like the scum of the earth again. Maybe I am. Maybe I deserve what I feel. My brothers seem to have convinced themselves they don’t deserve any real blame for her death. I’m not as forgiving of myself. My mom deserves the truth, no matter how much it hurts me and I’ll make sure at the very least she gets that from her oldest worthless, self-absorbed, unworthy son.
If there's an afterlife, I hope she sees how I suffer nearly every night thinking about what happened to her, and that she knows if I could go back in time and move in with her when I had the chance to prevent this from happening, I would. I hope she knows that I loved her more than any other person in this world, and I still do. And I hope she forgives me. But I have no real way of knowing, and it hurts so much knowing that I likely never will for the rest of my life.
Please forgive yourself for anything you wish you could have handled differently. I hope memories of your beloved mom and the close and precious relationship you shared bring you much comfort.
Why would your mother, given her many health conditions, go out in bad weather to look for her cat?
There were better solutions to both problems and they were your mother's to find. Not yours.
It was not your fault. You will be grieving. And that is OK. I think our western ways really don't get taught how to grieve well..
What if you had moved in but she still went out & she fell just the same?
I think it's Ok to say Sorry to your Mom. Sorry she is gone at an early age. Say it every day to her photo + I miss you & in time, find a way to remember the good memories.
You are not guilty,.
Your mom would not want you to live with the guilt you are feeling.
Your mom was young. No one "expects" something like that to happen.
Your mom I am going to assume was of sound mind. She made the decision to go out and look for a cat when it was dangerous for her to do so. We all have done things like that. 99.99% of the time with no dire consequences. We all make decisions every day, multiple times a day that could go wrong but rarely do. Get on a ladder to change a light bulb, go to the basement or attic to get something, or put something away. Getting in to the car to go to the store could put your life in danger. We go to sleep every night not thinking about the slight possibility that we will not wake in the morning.
What happened was not anything you did or did not do, it was nothing that she did or did not do. What happened was what we call life. We all go about your lives thinking that we have time. No one wants to think about our clock running down. And you can't. You can not go through life thinking this will be your last year, month, day, moment.
There is nothing for her to forgive you for.
What you should do is allow yourself to grieve. And there is no time limit on grief. There are grief support groups they can be of tremendous help. There is also a fine line between grief and depression and it can be difficult to tell the difference. It might be worth it to talk to a therapist if you can not get to a Bereavement support Group.
Please sleep well tonight with the thought that she would not blame you for what happened.
Please seek grief counseling so that you can work this out in your mind with a Licensed Social Worker who specializes in counseling on life transitions. We see this on Forum all the time. Some elders flat out refuse a move to care, and when there is an accident and death the children take on the mantle of pain. It may be a way, grief counselors suggest, of avoiding GRIEF, which knows that there is no going back, there is nothing that can be changed, it just must be felt and worked through.
Let me assure you that felons, who do evil and DO deserve to feel grief do NOT feel it. They are psychopathic or malignant narcissist personalities incapable of beating themselves up, of even questioning themselves. So that is not you. I think that's clear to all of us.
If those who "believe" are correct, and your Mom is somewhere looking down on you, then she is in a place of perfect understanding, and she will do all she can to prevent this terrible grief for you. The way to honor her now is to celebrate her life. The way you choose to think of your Mom will form a "path" in your brain and your brain will continue to blindly take that path. As I said, it does your Mom no honor and she wouldn't want that for you. She would want you to live you life with joy.
Your note here will already have people think more about what they do in future. So that is a good thing you have already accomplished.
I am so sorry for your loss. I am a Mom of two. I am 79. It would break my heart completely to think that my children would put this grief upon themselves rather than making a scrapbook of my life, writing me notes about wonderful things they felt or saw, things that remind them of me.
In 2019 he passed out and fell off the back of a truck he was unloading. That's when an emergency pacemaker was surgically installed on the 4th of July. I spent my 62nd birthday in the hospital at his bedside.
But nothing changed. On Halloween 2020, after repeated bouts of angina and eating nitroglycerin like Tic tac along with his bacon and eggs, he had emergency triple bypass heart surgery with triglycerides of 650. I didn't know the number could go that high.
When complications set in 2 weeks later, he had lung surgery to remove a large pleural effusion that developed.
All that saturated fat he ate for so long caused non alcoholic cirrhosis of his liver which led to a malignant tumor which was unsuccessfully ablated in April. The tumors will keep coming back due to a diseased liver.
Now he's undergoing a ton of tests to see if he's a candidate for a liver transplant in September.
All this to tell you I feel your pain. I feel your guilt. Why didn't I open my big mouth and make him stop eating so horribly for so long? Because we all think we have time. But we're wrong, quite often, because time isn't guaranteed to anyone. My favorite, and most hated at the same time, expression is "everything is fine until it isn't fine anymore." Things change in the blink of an eye, all while we thought we had plenty of time.
Forgive yourself, my friend, as I am working on forgiving myself. You had no ill will towards your mother. She was young. You thought you had time. I had no ill will towards my husband. I figured he was okay with no high bp and no weight issue. Maybe both of us should have known better, but hindsight is always 20:20, isn't it?
I'm very sorry for the loss of your beloved mother. I know she is at perfect peace now but troubled to know the burden you've placed on yourself for her death. She doesn't want you to feel guilty. God called her home, is what happened, in reality, and you had no way of stopping that summons. Just as I will have no way to stop His summons if He calls my husband home one of these days.
We are human and doing our best within the limitations we have to work with. Remember that, as I am myself. We are loving people and THAT is what's most important.
Wishing you peace now. You deserve it.
People make their own decisions in life and accidents happen. She could have easily called you (or someone else) to come over to look for the cat rather than go out on her own. She has a 5 year history of falls and clearly understood that the stairs were dangerous for her. It's a risk she took, and one she might still have taken regardless of whether or not you were actually living in her house.
I agree with the other posters that you perhaps should find someone to help you process your grief. I'm sure your mother would want you to move on with your life. Holding onto guilt isn't going to bring her back, it is just going to hurt you, which will have a trickle down effect on other relationships in your life.
When my dad had his heart surgery he had a stroke in the hospital. My mom immediately blamed herself for the stroke because she didn’t tell my father not to have the surgery. I told her that he was willing to take the risk of surgery because he most certainly would have died without having surgery.
It broke my heart watching mom feel guilty about something that she couldn’t prevent. There is no way that you could have prevented this from happening.
We can’t predict what others will do. When my youngest daughter began to drive I had strict rules about no passengers in the car. Did she listen? Nope! She was driving with three other friends to another friends house to go swimming in their pool.
Well, I get a call that she was in the hospital. My best friend drove me because I was too upset to drive. I got there and her shirt was covered in blood. She opened her eyes and said, “Mom, I am so sorry about your car.” She totaled it! I told her that I didn’t care about my car and wanted her to be okay.
All sorts of thoughts go through our heads when accidents occur. I said to myself that I should not have let her use the car that day, but the accident could have occurred in someone else’s car. She was a teenager that thought she was ready to drive with friends in the car.
Getting stitches on her forehead, wrecking her already bad knee, that she had from a dance team injury, having a concussion, injuring her back, drove the point home to her about not blasting the radio and driving with three other girlfriends as a new driver.
She moved to Colorado after graduating college and rented a third floor walk up. So, what did she do? Walk down the stair after heavy snowfall in her slippers instead of her snow boots! More injuries. I am glad that she recently moved to a building with an elevator.
My mom who had Parkinson’s disease was always reaching for things on the shelf in her closet. Of course, she would lose her balance and fall. When I asked her why didn’t she call me to get something for her. I was in the same house with her. She said that she didn’t want to bother me. I told her getting something off a shelf was less of a bother than an ER trip. It’s sad that we do foolish things sometimes but most of us wish to feel independent. I am so sorry that your mom was injured and died.
I want to tell you that your mom died when it was her time to go. I know that it doesn't seem fair because she was relatively young but, it was her time and nothing could have changed that.
I know that she would not want you beating yourself up because of what happened. No loving mother would ever want their son to feel the way that you are feeling, it would be devastating to her to know that you blame yourself for her demise.
You DID NOTHING WRONG! STOP beating yourself up and grieve for your loss and honor your mother by being the best you possible. If you need to do something, advocate for osteoporosis awareness, it is completely treatable and yet, story after story of someone getting injured unto death because of it. That is the true shame in this very sad situation. Not that you were trying to protect her from the pandemic.
You were obviously a good and caring son, you loved her the best way you could and that is all any of us can do. Live a life that she would be proud of.
I am sorry for your loss and I pray that God grants you grieving mercies and comfort during this difficult time. May HE show you that HE had her days numbered and it had nothing to do with you.