By Abigail Johnston

“Survivor guilt (or survivor’s guilt; also called survivor syndrome or survivor’s syndrome) is a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt. The experience and manifestation of survivor’s guilt will depend on an individual’s psychological profile.
Survivors Guild Symptoms
When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) was published, survivor guilt was removed as a recognized specific diagnosis, and redefined as a significant symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It may be found among survivors of combat, epidemics, murder, natural disasters, rape, terrorism among the friends and family of those who have died by suicide, and in non-mortal situations.”
This is such a real thing amongst breast cancer patients and I confess that I had no real concept of how this works until the first person with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer I was close with died. I didn’t have much of a frame of reference for how I would feel about Kari dying. That was her name, Kari. Kari Roush.
I read once that when a person dies, there are three deaths: 1) when their physical body fails; 2) when the physical body is buried; and 3) when their name is forgotten. Kari has passed the first two deaths. As far as it depends on me, her memory will not be forgotten.
When I heard Kari died, it wasn’t a surprise. She’d been failing for weeks and she was home and cared for by her family and hospice. She was comfortable (as comfortable as possible) and she was ready to leave the suffering of her human body and go to be with Jesus in heaven.
She was ready, but I wasn’t.
Kari’s death hit me like a ton of bricks and I’d never met her in real life. We’d never even talked on the phone. We were literally strangers to each other except for the late night messages and discussions we had regularly. It felt weird that I was floored and felt so awful. It felt almost wrong, like I didn’t have a right to be grieving when I had such a small part of her.
Turns out, I was also dealing with survivors guilt in a big way. You see, Kari and I had nearly an identical diagnosis, hormone positive, her2- breast cancer that had metastasized to our bones only. We were even on the same medication. Yet, I was stable and she started having progression. Once the cancer left her