In This Article:
- What is survivor’s guilt, and why does it linger?
- How does grief impact the healing process?
- How can you find peace while living with loss?
- The importance of honoring memories while moving forward.
Survivor’s Guilt: Living With the Loss of a Loved One
by Maryann Weston, author of the book: Revealing Light.
Survivor’s guilt is commonly referred to as the experiences of someone who survived a loss while others, or another, didn’t. Cancer wards are full of those who will survive, and those who won’t.
From the beginning of my cancer experience, I knew that I was reasonably early staged. We got to my cancer while it was still encased in the colon because of two reasons: my doctor had been hounding me to have a colonoscopy because of symptoms and those symptoms were getting worse, and my sister’s diagnosis. Had I left testing any longer, I may not have been so fortunate.
My surgeon told me upfront that he was going for “cured.” He insisted upon radiation and chemotherapy before the surgery to shrink the tumor to give me the best chance for longterm survival. Similarly, my oncologist wanted me to have mop-up chemotherapy after surgery to maximize the chance that I would remain cancer free in the future.
At Stage 2a, and with good pathology indicating the surgery had been successful, I still chose the mop-up chemo. I didn’t want to get down the track only to find that the last lot of chemo would have picked up any stray cancer cells left over from earlier treatment.
Learning from Others
My elder sister Jane was diagnosed at a later stage. Just as she had throughout my life, she went in front of me, and I learned from her experience.
What did I learn from her death? To be honest with you, I’m still working that one out. You see, if I had obtained my wish, we would be still sharing experiences, weekly and sometimes daily chats. The kind where you sit in your bathrobe in the morning, and are still talking after your second cuppa, and, perhaps, glance at the clock on the wall only to realize it is late morning and your busy day likely won’t start until after lunch.
Ah, but the relaxed conversation reminds you that nothing is more important than the present company, and the familiar and homely vibe that calms your mood, and your worries, because you know for certain that if the earth fell through its axis, you’d have someone looking out for you, someone who wouldn’t leave you behind.
So, you see, I don’t really know what I learned from her death and that’s the classic pattern of survivor’s guilt. There doesn’t seem to be any reasonable explanation for why she didn’t survive too.
I’m not saying she wouldn’t have wanted me to survive, she absolutely did because we were the closest of sisters and we wished each other the best in life. There was no doubt about that; you don’t doubt bedrock love.
Living with Survivor's Guilt
I understand the “survivor’s” part well. I go on with my life, without my sister in it and that is part of losing someone close and the grief. I’m less able to articulate the “guilt” part. It is a feeling that words can’t adequately convey. It’s the images of her valiant attempts to stay alive, having surgery after surgery; it’s her unwavering support of my journey and celebrating with me when I returned good test results.
It’s seeing her suffer unspeakable physical pain and being strong enough to carry it with dignity, and it’s the look on her face when she realized hope was gone when the medical and oncology experts told her that. It’s the part of me that didn’t know what to say then, or where to look. It’s that feeling of boundless shock that I drowned in, not knowing if this was real.
She was to pass away and go, and I was to stay and live. Two sisters with the same cancer, in the same place, and one had to go in front. One died and one lived.
For months, years afterwards all I could rationalize was that she was eight years older than me, so being younger was a rationalization to live a little longer, as pathetic as that sounds. And I had looked after her, along with my other sisters when she was recovering from her many surgeries.
I recall going for the jugular of a cancer survivor on an online support group, who, when I let the group know, she’d passed away, said: “Yes, I remember Jane, she kept backing up for those surgeries didn’t she.”
I replied, “The reason she did that was because her type of tumor was resistant to chemo. She had no other option but surgery, after surgery, after surgery if she wanted to live.”
Another member of the group, a young mum who was diagnosed just after she’d given birth to a baby girl, intervened in her gentle way. “I’m so sorry you’ve lost your sister. She fought with such courage.” (This brave young mum also passed away a few short years after my sister.)
Death Was Unavoidable
Jane quietly carried her pain, and a dogged hope right to the end. She didn’t want to go and was never ready to go. She even agreed to try a different chemo that might prolong her life despite the risks. She knew it may not work, however, when she was told no more surgeries were possible, there was no other choice left but to try one last lifeline, albeit a temporary one.
I was with her that day; they couldn’t find a vein at her first infusion because she was skin and bone. They sent her for a port — a device implanted under the skin in the chest region which is plumbed directly into an artery to make chemo infusion possible.
Unfortunately, the surgeon punctured her lung when putting the port in because there was very little fat left between her skin and her lungs. It took weeks for her lung to inflate, and she was told afterwards that even high-risk maintenance chemo would not work.
I was with her visiting at the hospital during those days too. Inevitably they told her, “Go home and set your affairs in order.” Her six-year fight to live was over.
Yes, I was there through all that. When she couldn’t stop shaking because death was unavoidable. When she told me that she would miss me when she died.
“You won’t be far way,” I said. “And I’m a psychic... I’ll find a way to talk to you, so you won’t miss me.”
The Loss of a Loved One
Those of us who have lost loved ones know that in the first few years after the loss, it is difficult to break through grief. It’s encompassing and can be like sitting at the bottom of a dark well.
I believe this makes communication hard for our loved one in Spirit. I have felt her around me a few times, not as many as I had hoped. Once I felt her presence acknowledging the love between us. On another occasion I woke with the feeling I’d spent time with her, that kindred, affirming, sisterly feeling I missed so much. I’ve also met her in the dreamscape on more than one occasion, yet it is not the same as sharing our lifetime together.
I hope that I can better understand my survivor’s guilt in time, that awareness and insight will be the balm for that boundless shock that I still feel when I remember all that has happened because of our cancers. I suspect that, as I write this after four years, these feelings will be with me until I too pass into Spirit.
She was right, as usual. In that phrase, “I will miss you,” was the premonition of things to come. As much as she might miss me, I miss her most days of my life. The memory of my sister never dims. A lifetime of friendship is a precious thing to recall, still.
Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Article Source:
BOOK: Revealing Light
Revealing Light: How Cancer Illuminated My Divine Blueprint
by Maryann Weston.
A spiritual odyssey, Revealing Light: How Cancer Illuminated My Divine Blueprint tells the story of its author's psychological and spiritual evolution, from confronting her mortality with a deadly illness to creating a community of like-minded people. In 2015, amid a successful career, wife and mother Maryann Weston was diagnosed with cancer. Confronted by death, she felt inadequate and small.
If only she had known then how supremely and divinely Spirit would soon walk beside her, onto cancer's battlefield... This book is about the gifts received through adversity, about learning in the fiery waters of a spiritual baptism that many cancer warriors experience and how crisis can shatter existence to reveal divine purpose in life - a blueprint we agreed to before we were born.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition.
