Feeling guilty for being blessed

Have you ever felt guilty for something that you shouldn't feel guilty for? Something that is a really good thing and everyone else sees it as a good thing? Even the person who, without knowing it and not intending to, is the source of the guilt?

Earlier tonight I was at a funeral home. It was a wake for my cousin who died suddenly over the weekend. I haven't really talked much about it. I haven't even told my friends. None of them know. I don't know why. I guess I'm just not ready to tell them. Perhaps it's the effect of the ensuing shock. Who knows?

While I was at the funeral home I did the customary receiving line. I spoke with my cousins parents (my mother's first cousin is my cousin's father, we're all first and second cousins) and his sisters. Their putting on as good of a front as they can but I know they're devastated. When I spoke with my cousin's father, Frank, he congratulated me on my newborn daughter who is just one week old today.

You try to have a normal conversation in moments like these. Just to keep some sense of normalcy. Frank commented on how I have a son and a daughter and that now I have "a million dollar family". Could there be a greater sense of irony in this situation? I'm at his son's wake and he's congratulating me on my "million dollar family". How insanely screwed up is that? His 27 year old son is gone. What do you think he'd give to be back where I am now? More than a million dollars I'm sure.

So that's why I feel guilty. I feel guilty for having two beautiful, healthy, innocent babies at home while he is dying inside. I feel guilty for having the thing that has been taken from him.

Now I know that Frank is happy for me and that he doesn't hold it against me. It's not like that at all. It's just hard not to feel like my blessing is an accent and punctuation mark on his grief.