The need to cast blame when grief clouds reason

Jun 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News – Grief has many faces. Sometimes, it weeps. Sometimes, it rages. And sometimes, it reaches for the inexplicable. For many, the loss of a loved one is too much to bear, especially when the cause of death feels senseless, avoidable, or shameful. In such cases, denial can take the form of superstition, blame, or conspiracy. The mind, wounded by grief, seeks comfort not necessarily in truth, but in explanations that preserve dignity, deflect guilt, and offer some semblance of control in an uncontrollable moment.

Many years ago, a man was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. But neither he nor his family could bring themselves to accept the diagnosis. Instead, they created in their minds, and believed, a story that involved a neighbour allegedly throwing something sinister into the yard—an object, they claimed, imbued with an evil spirit. The man insisted that he stepped on this objected accidentally. He insisted that it was this spiritual attack that caused his wasting illness. The man went to his grave denying he had AIDS. The family too rejected the medical explanation and held on tightly to their version. In their minds, it was not a virus that killed him, but malevolent interference.

Then there was the case of a grieving father who lost his son in a motor vehicle accident. The son had been speeding. There was clear evidence of this. Yet, the father refused to acknowledge that his son’s recklessness caused his death. Instead, he latched onto a tale that had long been told in the area—of a ghost that roamed the neighbourhood. The man claimed that the ghost appeared just as his son was approaching the spot where the accident took place, and that it was this spirit that caused the crash. Again, we see a refusal to confront reality—replaced instead by supernatural rationalization.

Then there is the case of another young man died while speeding—this time after test-driving a vehicle.  His death broke the heart of his parents and his siblings, so much so that the parents were overwhelmed by grief that they insisted it wasn’t an accident at all. The narrative quickly turned to one of foul play—sabotaged brakes, enemies lurking in the shadows. In this parent’s mind, the death could not have been the result of the son’s own carelessness. It had to be murder.

There was a mother whose teenage daughter died suddenly from a ruptured brain aneurysm. The girl had complained of a headache the day before, but no one thought much of it—headaches are common, they assumed. When she collapsed at home and never regained consciousness, the doctors explained it was an aneurysm, a silent and often undetectable killer. But the mother, burdened with guilt for not acting sooner, could not accept the explanation. Then, one night, she had a vivid dream in which her daughter appeared to her, smiling by a lake, saying, “Mummy, I didn’t die because something was wrong. I heard my name and followed the voice. It was my time.”

The mother began to believe that her daughter’s death was not medical but spiritual—that she had been called away by forces beyond understanding. Rejecting the clinical diagnosis, she clung to this dream as truth. It gave her comfort and absolved her of guilt.

These stories, while disturbing, are not unusual. When death strikes suddenly—especially when it involves young people or causes that carry stigma or the sting of personal responsibility—those left behind often struggle to accept what really happened. Grief can blur facts. Emotions can override evidence. The pain of loss, combined with shame, guilt, or shock, can compel the mind to search for explanations that deflect blame from the deceased or from oneself. This is a natural psychological defence mechanism.

Psychologists refer to this as cognitive dissonance—the discomfort that arises when reality clashes with one’s beliefs or desires. For a parent, the idea that a beloved son was reckless, or that a child had contracted a stigmatized disease, is almost unbearable. The mind therefore creates alternate narratives that reduce this dissonance. These narratives may be irrational, implausible, or even fantastical. But they serve an important emotional function: they make the unbearable more bearable.

Blaming others—whether a neighbour, a ghost, or a saboteur—is a way of coping. It’s easier to believe in evil spirits or human malice than to accept that someone you love made a fatal mistake, or that fate dealt a cruel hand. In this way, blame becomes a balm. It externalizes the pain and shields the heart from truths too harsh to face.

But this tendency to blame should not be condemned. Rather, it should be understood as part of the grieving process. People in deep mourning are not always rational. Their anguish is real, and their need to make sense of what has happened is urgent. In such moments, what they need is not judgment but compassion.

It is easy, from a distance, to dismiss these stories as denial or ignorance. But when viewed through the lens of grief, they become understandable. The families in the stories mentioned above were not merely trying to deceive others—they were trying to shield themselves from emotional devastation. Their alternate explanations, however improbable, were born not out of malice but out of a profound need to survive the unthinkable.

This does not mean that such explanations should go unchallenged. It is important to guide grieving families toward truth, especially when lives could be saved through honesty and awareness—as in the case of AIDS, or when promoting road safety. But that guidance must be gentle. It must take into account the emotional terrain of the grieving heart.

In the end, what these three stories reveal is the immense complexity of grief. People don’t just mourn the dead—they mourn the circumstances of their death, the shame or guilt it might bring, and the empty space that now haunts their days. When the truth is too painful, they may reach for another story, one in which someone else is to blame. And in doing so, they are simply trying, in the only way they know how, to survive their sorrow.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

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• cast blame, depression, Grief, Make belief, Peeping Tom

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