Stop Wearing Your Guilt on Your Finger

A ring can’t undo the past. Here’s why some widowers need to take theirs off

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Simon “Cutie Pie” Baker plays the role of investigative consultant Patrick Jane on the show The Mentalist. He wears a wedding ring. And I hate what this ring is doing to him.

Patrick is a widower consumed with revenge. Coming home one day he discovered the dead bodies of his wife and young daughter in the master bedroom of their family home.

He walks around like everyone else. He provides excellent service to the detectives he works with. But at night he sleeps on a bare mattress on the floor in the room where the killer had struck.

Only one decoration remains on the wall. A large smiley face drawn in blood, the first thing he saw when he opened the door on that fateful day.

And the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.

Widowers should stop wearing their wedding ring if they feel guilty about their wife’s death.

The past cannot be changed.

Even if time travel were possible, the past cannot guarantee a different present-day outcome.

But wouldn’t it be great if we could? To go back and change something so that things would be different when you returned to today?

This is the stuff that science fiction movies are made of. In *The Butterfly Effect* the protagonist stumbles upon a way to travel back in time. He and his close friends endured horrific events in childhood that left them psychologically damaged as adults. He wants to change the past so that they have a fighting chance at happiness when he comes back.

On paper the plan sounds brilliant. I can think of a few wrongs that I would love to right in my own life. But there is a tiny hiccup that our protagonist couldn’t have known beforehand.

Every time travel trip produces chaotic and even devastating results in the present. The changes he makes in the past bring, at best, similar painful results. Usually, things are far worse than they were.

If you could travel to the past and alter something that you wish hadn’t happen in the way it did, what is the outcome you would aim for?

And what would give you the certainty that you were picking the right option?

Patrick blames himself for the deaths of his wife and child. He responds with, “I’m married,” while pointing at his wedding ring whenever another woman approaches him.

“But she’s dead.”

Guilt is the illusion of control.

Hindsight is always perfect. Looking back at something that happened, we spot areas where we could have taken different actions in the hope of living a different outcome now.

We ponder over how we might have prevented something painful from happening. ‘If only I had insisted on signing a contract, I wouldn’t have lost all that money I handed over on someone’s word.’ For years I felt duped and stupid as I replayed that scenario in my head.

Patrick has agonizing nightmares of opening the bedroom door and seeing the lifeless bodies of his wife and child strewn across the bed, covered in blood.

He wants to act but doesn’t know what to do. He wants to avenge but can’t seem to formulate a plan. Total loss of control and unimaginable pain have him trapped in a stormy sea of guilt with only the ring on his finger keeping him afloat.

Trying to make sense of what has happened is futile. His mind can’t compute the loss of his loved ones.

But guilt? He knows what to do with that. It gives him something to grab a hold of, even if only in his mind.

Guilt allows us to imagine we have a degree of control over life and death. We can tell ourselves a different story from the one that actually happened. One we can digest.

If guilt endowed you with power over life and death, what would you do with it?

No one else can decide whether or not widowers wear their wedding ring.

To those of us who wear a wedding ring it is something sacred. For many it is a symbol of “’til death do us part.” And what happens to the ring after a spouse dies is intensely personal. My mother still wears her wedding ring two decades after my father passed.

In the case of Patrick, his relationship with his wedding ring has fostered a warped sense of comfort born out of guilt that he should have prevented the deaths of his wife and child.

His guilt and wedding ring are all he’s got left and neither permit him to move forward in life.

I am not an expert on a widower’s grief, nor do I claim to have the authority to make decisions on their behalf.

We only have this one life and guilt doesn’t deserve it.

Widowers should stop wearing their wedding ring if they feel guilty about their wife’s death.

The past is done and dusted and cannot be changed.

Science fiction movies give us guesses as to the horrors we might encounter should we attempt to mess with the past. Logic tells me that even a tiny change would wreak havoc on everything that had already happened.

Guilt gives us the illusion of control over life and death.

Feeling helpless is one of the worst feelings I know, particularly in cases where I believe I could have done something more. But hindsight is always perfect and life never is.

We have control over some things while others leave us in eternal mystery. Death is the only certainty in life and we can’t alter its fate.

Life demands forward motion and we have the power to decide to align with it.

“I don’t think I can get over this.”

Near the end of an episode it is not uncommon for a character to feel helpless after losing a loved one who fell victim to a crime.

Patrick takes their hand and looks them in the eye as he says, “You can. You will. You must.”