Grief and guilt

One of the things I know about grief is that guilt often accompanies and complicates it. And I had been carrying both since Cissy died.
     There’s the “what if” variety of guilt – what if I had gotten there earlier,  what if I had called her on Easter as I had been planning to, what if, what if…
     And there’s the deeper, heavier, regretful guilt that can weigh on you like a stone.
     Sometimes, if she had said something that I found hurtful, I would avoid seeing Cissy for a week or two. I would be mad at her from afar, sitting with my own poison. And then I would get over it and give her a call, as I did the Tuesday before we found her, when I left a message asking her to come to dinner, not knowing she was dead just feet from the phone.
     Sometimes, I felt an absurd competitiveness with her over who was the better journalist/camper/whatever, as if we couldn’t both possess the same gifts.
     And sometimes, I was just too swept up in my own life to think about her, or think to call, or include her in my plans. I have wondered if I could have been a better friend.
     Then last night, her brother Richard came for dinner and handed me something he had found in a box in Cissy’s bedroom, not realizing what a gift he was giving me or how he was putting my guilt to rest.
     It was a photograph taken several years ago when Cissy and I and another friend, Beth, went away for the weekend to Ogunquit, Maine where the public garbage pails were painted and named. The photo shows the three of us standing in front of one such pail, laughing in the sun, each with a hand on the pail.
     Painted across the pail is a single word: “Forgiveness.”
     I swear, I think she sent it.