TL;DR on Living With Grief and Guilt
My son Matthew died at 24. About eighteen months after his death, I left my marriage of thirty-three years. While I have accepted Matthew’s death, there remains an empty place in our family that he would have filled. I feel that emptiness even on good days with my daughters and grandchildren.
It was right to leave my marriage, yet doing so still caused real pain to a woman I loved. I grew up believing that guilt must be paid for with suffering. Later, counsellors told me there was no reason to feel guilty at all.
The belief that guilt must be paid for with suffering, and the belief that there is no reason to feel guilt at all, are two answers to what to do with guilt, and each leaves something out. The first forgets that I had to leave, and the second forgets the pain I caused. For me, living with grief and guilt has meant keeping both of those facts in view.
In the same way, I keep both Matthew’s absence and a full family life in view.
Living With Grief When the Family Comes Together
My family had gone to a restaurant a few times. When we heard it was closing, my daughters arranged for us to go back one last time for high tea.
On the morning of the high tea, my eldest daughter sent me a photo. She was getting a coffee when she saw a Coles delivery truck parked, with the name Matthew written on the front and side. Coles delivery trucks don’t usually have a name on them, so seeing Matthew’s name on this truck brought his presence back to us in a very real way.
She texted that when we met that afternoon, Matthew was reminding us he was still present, even if not in body.
Most of us were there together. The grandchildren came, except one who was working, and so did my former wife. She sat with us at the table, but her illness kept her from joining in the way she once would have. Seeing her like that across the table brought home how far the illness has taken her, and it came as a shock.
Matthew was not there in body, yet somehow he was present. My former wife was there in body, yet she could not be present in the conversation. So two kinds of absence sat at the same table that afternoon, among people I love. I suspect some men reading this have sat at a table like ours, with someone missing and someone changed.
Around those two absences, a life has kept opening for me. In that life, I still choose where I go, and I take part in my children’s and grandchildren’s lives.
Feeling Low After a Family Gathering
I have wondered whether what I feel is survivor’s guilt. Part of it is a slight surprise that has never quite left me: I am still alive, and part of me didn’t expect to be. That surprise leaves me asking how I got here.
When I come home from an afternoon like that, I feel an invading greyness, a low mood, and I want to open a bottle of wine and forget. The greyness comes from all the things I cannot say, and they press in until I feel strangled. Most of those things belong to my marriage. Things that were too painful to say during the divorce, and now the illness means they remain unsaid.
I have come to believe I can live with both the absences and the life that keeps unfolding around them. I do not have to forget the absences, as the bottle would have me do, to take part in that life.
Grief After a Child Dies and the Place He Would Have Had
While I have accepted the reality of Matthew’s death, I still miss his physical presence and the physical space he would have occupied in our family.
Acceptance does not end the missing. Missing him is the dull ache, and it has lingered long after acceptance came. The ache is for Matthew himself in the room, taking part in whatever the family is doing. That ache reaches into the years he didn’t get to live, and into the part he would have played in our family through them all.
His absence is easy to see when the family gathers. At the high tea, my daughters and grandchildren were there, and so was his mother. Matthew was the one not at the table. His sister’s text that morning had already said both things at once: he would be missing from the table, and he would still be with us.
I enjoy watching and taking part in the lives of my daughters and grandchildren, and that enjoyment is real. Yet his absence is there in the middle of it. On a good family afternoon, I can be glad for the people at the table and miss the one who isn’t there at the same time. Neither feeling cancels the other.
Reflection Point on Grief and the Person I Miss
When your family comes together, whose absence do you notice, even when you enjoy being there?
Caring About a Former Wife After Divorce
My former wife and I are the same age. Her life is now shaped by the care she needs, while I still choose where I go. One question stays with me: how have our lives diverged so much?
We married young and shared a life for thirty-three years. Yet all that shared history still doesn’t answer that question.
During the divorce, there were things we did not say to each other because saying them was too painful. One was that the marriage had mattered, even though it didn’t last.
We also have the memories we shared. Those memories are now mine alone to carry, because the illness keeps her from sharing them. I alone am the keeper of the family stories from when the children were young.
Society calls us exes. That word is convenient shorthand, and it doesn’t come anywhere near the depth of care and compassion I still have for her. The care remains, even though we are divorced.
Leaving a Marriage After Coming Out
Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian home with a deeply homophobic father, I developed a heterosexual persona that I kept in place throughout my marriage. The grief of Matthew’s death left me without the energy to hold that persona in place any longer.
Coming out was a mixed experience. There was relief and acceptance that I am same-sex attracted and always have been.
I also felt sadness and grief about leaving the marriage. Because I was the one who left, I was the one who was judged, so I could never express that grief. The grief researcher Kenneth Doka calls this disenfranchised grief: grief that is not openly acknowledged or publicly mourned (Doka, 2002).
Leaving the marriage was part of being honest about who I am. I have written separately about grieving the life you built when a man leaves a marriage after coming out.
Honesty is important to me. If honesty was important enough to leave the marriage for, it is equally important to be honest that I caused pain to a woman I loved. A true account of my leaving must include both my right to leave and the pain it caused.
Religious Upbringing and the Fear of Punishment
The surprise of still being alive has a source I have never allowed myself to put into words. My father was a minister, and he preached that gay men were judged by God and went to hell. My upbringing was also filled with stories of people who had rejected God and then died by accident or illness. I was told God punished them for their rejection.
Because I was “living in sin”, subconsciously I was waiting for the punishment that had filled my childhood. The punishment didn’t come, so sometimes I’m slightly surprised: I am still here.
Is This Survivor’s Guilt
So is what I carry survivor’s guilt? Part of the term fits, because I am a survivor in two ways. My son died before me, which is the reverse of the order a father expects. And the early death I expected for myself, as punishment for coming out, never came.
The guilt is a different matter. When I look at what I actually feel guilty about, I find the pain my leaving caused my former wife, and that pain is where my guilt belongs.
With Matthew, I do not feel guilty. What I feel is a sense of going on with my life while the place he would have filled remains empty.
Guilt After Divorce When Leaving Was the Right Decision
I have been offered two ways to settle the guilt about my former marriage. The first is punishment, the way of thinking I grew up with. In that way of thinking, a wrong is answered with suffering, and suffering makes it right.
The second came from the counsellors I saw. They told me there was no reason for me to feel guilty, because I had the right to leave the marriage and be honest about who I am. Their assessment was correct, and I needed to hear it. As I heard it, though, their reassurance would have me live guilt-free, as if having the right to leave cancelled the pain caused by leaving.
Both answers fail in the same way, because each keeps only half of what happened. The punishment answer sees only the pain, so it says I did wrong by leaving and must suffer until I pay for it. The reassurance answer sees only the right, so it says there is nothing to feel.
Living With Guilt Without Punishing Myself
I feel the pull of the first answer. When guilt rises, part of me reaches for the old idea that suffering is what I owe. I do not follow that pull. I let the guilt remain because it reflects something real- the pain she felt- and I do not punish myself to make it go away.
Reflection Point on Guilt About a Decision You Made
If you feel guilty about a decision, what pain did it cause, and why did you need to make it?
Guilt About Not Visiting My Former Wife
Sometimes the guilt surfaces, and with it an extra layer of guilt for not visiting her. I don’t go to see her where she lives because, at this stage, I don’t have the emotional capacity for those visits. Instead, I see her when she comes to family events, and the high tea was the first she had attended in a year.
Feeling guilty about not visiting does not mean I have to go before I am able. Being unable to go does not make the guilt wrong. So the guilt and the limit both remain, alongside everything else in my life, and I do not let either cancel the other.
Reflection Point on Guilt and What I Cannot Do Yet
What do you feel guilty about not doing, and what stops you from doing it at this stage?
Living With Grief and Guilt While Life Goes On
Janus, the Roman god of doorways and beginnings, is depicted with two faces: one looking back and the other looking forward. When I began writing this essay, he was the first image that came to mind.
I recognise myself in him. One face looks back towards Matthew and towards the marriage my former wife and I shared. The other looks forward to my children and grandchildren, and to the years still ahead of me.
If I faced only backwards, I would live in my grief for Matthew and my guilt. My children and grandchildren would then receive only the edge of my attention. If I faced only forwards, I would have to forget Matthew and my former wife. That kind of forgetting is what the greyness pulls me toward on evenings when I want to open a bottle of wine.
Janus never had to choose which way to face, and I do not believe I have to choose either. The place Matthew would have had stays open because he still matters to me. The guilt remains for the same reason: my former marriage was and is important to me too. For me, living with the grief and guilt means feeling them. One plain way to hold them is a sentence with two true halves: Matthew is not at the table, and somehow he is here.
Grief and major change can also leave you questioning who you are and what comes next. I explore those questions in Rebuilding Identity After Loss.
Reflection Point on Grief and Taking Part in Life
What do you still enjoy while missing someone, and how could you put both facts into one sentence using the word “and”?
An Exercise for Grief and Guilt
If you carry two contradictory truths, neither has to give way to the other. Sometimes it helps to write the two truths out and join them with the word “and”. The joining word matters, because a “but” lets the second truth overrule the first, while an “and” gives both truths the same weight.
For example:
- Name who is missing or changed, and how they are still with you. Write who is absent, in body or in the conversation, then how they are still part of your life. My example: “Matthew is not at the table, and somehow he is here.”
- Name a choice you had the right to make, and what it cost. If you made a choice like this, write the decision first, then the pain it caused someone else. My example: “I had the right to leave, and I caused pain to a person I loved.”
- Name the guilt about something you cannot do yet, and the limit that stops you. Write the guilt first, then the limit. My example: “I feel guilt for not visiting, and I do not have the emotional capacity for that at this stage.”
The next time guilt comes to the surface, and you start to judge yourself as a failure or as weak, read each sentence to yourself, both halves, without crossing out or softening either one. My example: after the next family gathering, when the greyness sets in.
Ambiguous Loss and Life Around the Family Table
That afternoon held a strange mix. Matthew was absent yet present; my former wife was present yet absent. Around them, my daughters and grandchildren interacted, all at one table.
The family researcher Pauline Boss calls this ambiguous loss. She describes people who are physically absent yet still present in the family’s mind, and people who are physically present yet absent in mind (Boss, 1999).
Sometimes a greyness creeps over me after events like that, a fog of grief, missing, guilt and sadness. Over the years, I have learned to recognise the greyness when it arrives and accept it as part of what follows such a day. I have also learned to leave the bottle of wine unopened and trust that, given time, rest, and self-compassion, the greyness shifts and life returns.
My experience fits what the bereavement researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut describe (Stroebe & Schut, 1999). In their model, grieving moves back and forth between facing the loss and getting on with life, and time away from grief is part of coping.
How did I get here, still alive? Part of the answer is that the punishment I expected never came. The rest is in the ordinary days, when I kept taking part in my family’s lives while still missing Matthew and still feeling guilty. If you are carrying two truths like these, start with the first sentence, the one about who is missing and how they are still with you.
You might be missing someone, feeling guilty about a decision, or finding family occasions harder than you expected. Mentoring offers time to consider what you are finding difficult and work out practical ways to manage daily life.
Book a free 30-minute introductory call to see whether mentoring would suit you.
Questions About Living With Grief and Guilt
Why Do I Still Miss Someone After Accepting Their Death
I can only speak from my own life, and for me, yes. I accepted Matthew’s death long ago, and I still miss his physical presence as a dull ache that stays. Accepting a death and missing a person are two different things, so one does not cancel the other. I have written more about this for other fathers in Continuing Bonds for Fathers After a Child Dies.
Can I Feel Guilt After Divorce If I Had the Right to Leave
For me, yes: I had the right to leave, and leaving caused pain to a woman I loved. I hold both of those facts at once, because dropping either one would make my account of what happened untrue. If you made a choice you had the right to make, and it hurt someone, both can be true. Guilt After Divorce for Men looks at guilt after separation in more depth.
Why Do I Feel Low After a Family Gathering
For me, the greyness arrives afterwards, at home. The greyness comes mostly from things that went unsaid in my marriage, which now cannot be said to my former wife because of her illness. When it arrives, I recognise it and accept it as part of what follows a day like that. I feel the urge to open a bottle of wine and forget, but I leave it unopened as the greyness shifts.
Is What I Am Feeling Survivor’s Guilt
For me, the term fits only in part. The word survivor fits, because my son died before me and the early death I expected never came. My guilt is about the pain my leaving caused my former wife. With my son, I feel like I’m living my life while the place he would have filled stays empty.
About David Kernohan and Mentoring Through the Maze®
David Kernohan is a Perth-based men’s mentor who helps men rebuild their sense of identity, direction and self-trust after grief, loss and major life change. His work particularly supports men navigating bereavement, separation and divorce, difficult father relationships, major role changes, and the effects of leaving high-control religion.
David began his professional life as a Mental Health Nurse and has spent more than 20 years leading community, mental health, and legal organisations, working with people facing complex social and emotional challenges. He has served as a Director of Community Legal Centres and held senior leadership roles across homelessness, mental health, crisis support and services for men.
His work is also informed by lived experience, including the death of his son, divorce and leaving fundamentalism. These experiences have shaped his understanding of how deeply major life events can change how a man sees himself, his relationships, and his future.
David founded Mentoring Through the Maze®, a non-clinical mentoring practice that helps men understand what has changed, rebuild a stronger sense of who they are, and move forward with greater clarity and confidence.
References
Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.
Doka, K. J. (Ed.). (2002). Disenfranchised grief: New directions, challenges, and strategies for practice. Research Press.
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/074811899201046
