Survivors Guilt

I don’t even know where to begin.

I’ve lost friends to Covid over the last six months which has left me feeling guilty for surviving. I know that sounds crazy but it’s true and is something that sometimes keeps me up at night.

Image by Juraj Varga

One of my close friends for twenty-five years passed away due to pneumonia from Covid. She struggled with every breath in the end and didn’t want to be put on a vent. But, she gave in and that was the last time she was with us. She never woke up. She never came off the vent alive.

Not for a second during her long hospital stay did I doubt she wouldn’t come out of it. I felt she had this. She was going to go home any day acting like her normal self. Everything was going to go back to normal.

I was so wrong.

Like others with underlying medical conditions, she had MS. Pneumonia and MS are a deadly combination and I know that. Others have passed away because they weren’t able to breathe. But, still, I felt there was no way she wasn’t going to beat this.

The night she was on the vent I awoke during the night to go to the bathroom and saw my light flashing on my phone. I picked up my phone and to my horror, I seen a message saying she had passed away.

I was instantly blown away. How could this be? She can’t be gone. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. She was supposed to come home not die in the hospital!

Over the next few months, I kept thinking she was out there driving. She was a truck driver who only came home on the weekends so I wasn’t able to see her much and because of Covid, she was very careful of exposure so we kept things limited to talking on the phone. There were days we would spend two hours just catching up.

I never realized how much I think about her. I think about her pretty much every single day.

Anytime I’m traveling and see a semi which is all the time traveling to the James for the appointments that are an hour away I wonder where she is. Will I pass her on her journey to her next drop-off? Is that her in the truck ahead of me?

I think about her when I see really cool fingernail polish on Facebook because that is something we shared. We both did our nails and loved the different designs. Now I have no one to share them with. I can’t share them with her to get her opinion on a cool design, or a new product that’s out, or show her something I thought she would like.

Her loving daughter shares photos of her grandchildren on Facebook when they are out exploring, on vacation, or just really cute daily photos.

It rips my heart out! She would have been included in the outing. She would’ve been at that birthday party watching her granddaughter open her presents. She’s missing! There’s this huge hole in the room that can’t be filled because she isn’t replaceable.

She doesn’t get to watch them grow up.

She doesn’t get to celebrate the holidays with them.

That’s where the guilt comes in.

I’ve battled leukemia and a transplant for almost a year now that has left me with compromised immunity. I’m on a ton of drugs that make my life difficult just walking across the parking lot and make it very easy for me to pick up anything I come in contact with.

I came down with Covid around the same time she did but I didn’t spend one night in the hospital. I was given the antibodies to help fight it off but the very next day they said they weren’t going to help with the variant that was going around. So they were useless according to the news.

Covid for me turned out to be nothing more than a bad cold and fever. I spent a few days popping Tylenol and watching tv sitting in my recliner. I’ve had allergies issues that were more problematic than Covid. Other than an occasional fever it was no big deal to me. I have been through so much worse to this point.

But not her.

She was in the hospital fighting to breathe.

Why?

It should’ve been me.

I’m the one with a severely compromised immunity. I should be the one in ICU fighting to breathe not her. It’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense to me. My doctor told me not to get Covid because it could easily kill me.

It brakes my heart to know she’s not here with us. It kills me to watch her grandkids and kids enjoy life without her.

I feel so guilty even though I know it’s not my fault or there’s literally nothing I can do about it. But at the same time, I just can’t wrap my head around her being gone.

To me, she still out there driving her semi with her sparkly purple fingernails.

I miss her!

It’s not fair that I get to watch my grandkids grow up but not her.

It’s heartbreaking!