This week the news media announced the suicide deaths of two young people who survived the tragic Parkland, Florida shooting. Many surmised that the sticky web of trauma, depression, and survivor guilt had caught them in despair so deep these young people only saw one way out. Death. I understood that process. Even in my short time volunteering with students and staff at NIU following their tragic school shooting, I saw the haunted expressions of trauma, depression, and survivor guilt.

If you look up survivor guilt in a google search, you will find articles about those who survive trauma and hear the question of “Why not me?” Or statements that begin with “If only…” It is a natural process of wanting to understand why heartbreak comes to some and others escape its clutches. But it torments the soul of those who can’t come to some place of comprehension or understanding. It torments the soul of those who feel driven to create meaning or purpose out of what feels like an empty, aching loss.

I have experienced dark moments of dancing with the demons of survivor guilt. My regular readers know that I lost a dear friend, Delayne, to the same kind of breast cancer I have. Same cancer. Same treatment. Totally different outcomes. I have agonized over why I am still here and she is not. She was an amazing person, who touched the lives of so many people with her spirit and her kindness. She lived her faith with a heart of compassion and you felt it simply by being in her presence. When I would question “why?’ out loud, people would come up with the rather simplistic argument that I had things to accomplish yet. Instantly, my mind resisted this concept. I know the world needed so much more of Delayne than it received. I also do not believe that God works like that. I cannot see God picking and choosing who gets to survive like a grand conveyor belt, where the lucky cancer patients are plucked by Him to safety. I believe God loved Delayne and I equally. I believe He delighted in our friendship and walked with us through the agony of our cancer. I believe the God that loves us, does not operate a conveyer belt.

There was a time after Delayne’s death that I sought to create meaning out of it by making my life count in some amazing, technicolor way. It was a pressure too great for me to bear. I could not, nor will I ever, live a life that can make meaning out of Delayne’s loss. She loved and was loved by so many people. I waited in line for three hours at her visitation to speak to her family. Three hours standing in community with those who carried Delayne in their heart. You see, at the core of my survivor guilt was grief. The deep heart wrenching loss of someone who touched my life. Even as I write this, I can’t stop the tears from falling. 

I wrote in my first book, I’d Rather Love Life Than Hate Cancer, that I don’t ask God to protect me from suffering. I simply ask that He walk with me through those dark times. Grieving for Delayne will forever be one of those times. I may never have answers to the question of why and I accept that I probably never will. But I have grief. That painful emotion that is the price we pay for loving one another. And resting beside the grief, I have gratitude. Gratitude that I was ever lucky enough to know and love my dear friend, Delayne.

Dedicated to DeLayne Hogan 1967-2013