Well, Gator, I hope that by reading this, you have noticed that there are a wide variety of reactions to this sort of event. You’ve read of people saying that they would be wracked by guilt, and you’ve read of others who say that it wouldn’t bother them at all. (Notice that, for all of these, the question is in the abstract. Some may feel differently were these events to actually happen.)
All of the reactions from these people are perfectly ordinary and “normal”. There is no “right” way to feel. Nor is there a “right” thing to do. Like before, take the information you have and make the best decisions possible.
I, like others, strongly suggest that your parents seek counseling. Simply talking about what happened and having a dispassionate person say “That’s terrible” is worth a lot. I especially liked Bosda’s idea of seeking absolution from a minister. Eventually, however, it is not God’s forgiveness, or the victim’s family’s forgiveness that will matter. Your dad will need to forgive himself.
I worked for about 10 years in a psychiatric setting–it was right before they were closing down the large institutions and transferring patients to smaller group homes. First I want to suggest that if this man’s mental difficulties were so severe that medication was not helping and he needed an assisted-living situation, it should not be expected that his family should be able to care for him (as one poster suggested). Nor can the group home necessarily be blamed that he “escaped”. It is a very thin line between keeping patients safe and trying to help them lead as normal a life as possible.
Some people won’t like this part for certainly all life is sacred, but having worked with serverly mentally disabled people I can say that many of them live in constant pain and fear. We lost a few patients and none of the staff could say they felt the normal kind of loss one feels–we all felt happy for the dead patient that they were no longer suffering.
And one more thing, do you think it is possible that the feelings connected to the death are in part just the normal shock we would all tend to experience when we experience the sudden accidental death of another? Compounded, of course by the fact that your dad caused it, even though he was not at all at fault. I just say that because as a nurse I vividly remember my first dead person, and in fact I burst into tears. My older sis has worked Emergency Room and she said it’s pretty tough at first. My younger sis has worked Intensive Care and she says that some nights dozens of pictures of dead people (I mean her patients) go before her eyes as she is going to sleep. Well, just a thought. Good luck.