Joe Biden: I felt guilty my son came home alive. 18th Annual TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar

May 25th, 2021 | https://george.news | https://todaysmilitary.com/futures | “I used to resent it when people would say, `I know how you feel’ because they have no idea of the black hole of feeling in your chest.”

From May, 2012 | Vice President Biden, speaking Friday to families and friends of military personnel killed in action, gave a powerful retelling of the death of his wife and daughter 40 years ago — saying he’d realized then how grief might push a person to suicide.

“For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide,” Biden told a meeting of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors at a hotel in Crystal City. The group offers counseling to relatives and friends of military personnel who have died. It was holding its 18th annual military survivor seminar.

“Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts,” Biden continued, according to a transcript. “Because they’d been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they’d never get there again, that it was never going to get — never going to be that way ever again. That’s how an awful lot of you feel.”

Media here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-shares-tales-of-loss-with-families-friends-of-military-casualties/2012/05/25/gJQAdUMcqU_story.html

And here: https://www.govexec.com/defense/2012/05/biden-gets-personal-comforting-families-fallen-warriors/55937/

Here: https://www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/2001172052/