My Wife is blaming herself
On Thursday night, my wife's wonderful mother had a massive stroke. She was at her apartment alone, so between 5pm and 8am the next morning, she was alone, fighting for her life. She had been talking with a friend. The friend reached out to us with a message saying the call had dropped and she couldn't get ahold of her. My wife and I are exhausted from working and raising 2 small children, and in the moment, I didn't think we needed to worry. She lives 2 hours away and I figured she probably just had gone to sleep early. Her texts were left unread and when we hadn't heard from her by morning we called in the wellness check and they found her on the floor in a rough state, but alive and responsive, unable to speak...
My wife is devastated, blaming herself for not acting sooner, her mom was a single mom raising only her, in many ways she is the only family she has, other than me and the kids.
I feel a deep shame for not having immediately advocated for a wellness check, I just view her as a strong independent grandma who wouldn't appreciate the police coming to her apartment, looking back I don't understand why I felt that way.
I keep telling my wife that this isn't anyone's fault, the stroke caused this, not her, but she is understandably heartbroken, we both are. Grandma was supposed to be with us all weekend for the holiday with the kids, and now she will probably never drive a car again and never fully recover.
A Hospitalist told my wife that her mother wouldn't most likely never improve, which I don't understand why he would do that, I though it was way too early to close the book on her recovery. She recognizes her daughter, and is speaking, she gets caught in some loops of speech but she is also still in the ICU recovering, hopefully getting to the normal hospital today.
It's like we are grieving someone who is still alive, and my wife misses her mom so much. We're compartmentalizing for the kids but they know grandma is in the hospital and mom is visiting her. It's all so much, I think she understandably blames me for telling her everything was probably fine, when it so, so wasn't.
Any advice would be appreciated.