With all the horrible, horrible news stories taking over our television sets and mobile devices lately, I find myself being so very thankful that neither of your deaths had any other confusing emotion or feeling associated with it; the greatest of all being anger and hatred.
I'm thankful that cancer is a disease and not a person. I hate it...everything about it, everything it did to you, momma, and everything it continues to do to others. I hate it for how confused it made you, and for the way it made you almost unrecognizable. I hate it for the years of memories we might have had together, for the advice I will never get to receive, for the moments you were robbed of getting to witness and experience. I hate it for the way the word alone makes my heart sink. I hate it for some of the heartbreaks that go along with the disease we had to see: the loss of movement, the confusion, and that choking during the last few weeks. I hate it for the glazed over yellowish look it gave those bright blue eyes when the end was nearing, for the way it made you think you were ugly when you saw your own reflection in the mirror. I hate the fact that it made us have to put signs on the door going to each room, and it still didn't stop you from going into the garage when you had to pee or going toward the bathroom when it was time for bed. I hate the way I couldn't help but feel frustrated and angry and sad all at the same time, when you couldn't remember where your glasses were or that your tea had already been reheated 47 times. "Just zap it for 15 seconds." I hate that you ended every telephone conversation with "and promise me you'll take care of yourself, and that you'll always remember and never forget how much I love you." Because you knew words were all I'd have to cling to soon enough. I hate that some of my favorite stories about you from that time were really, really sad stories when you really sit down and think about them. But it was dad who reminded me, "if we couldn't laugh about it, we would all go crazy."
And dad...in so many ways, cancer killed you, too. Because as much as you didn't always want to admit it, the day mom died, she took a huge part of you with her. The first words that came out of your mouth after she was gone that day were "I always loved your mother." You had spent more of your life with her than you had without her by the end, whether it was as your wife or as one of your best friends. But for years, you fought a different battle that most people knew little about, because you did so well at keeping it hidden, and at being hilariously brilliant so nobody ever really knew how much you suffered. I hate that you always thought it was bigger than you and that I don't know if you ever really thought you could overcome it, but you, my daddy-o, could do anything. I remember being so scared of losing you during every hospital visit that started my freshman year of college and occurred several times after that before the final stay. And again, I cursed and hated the circumstances. Hated the thing you thought you couldn't overcome, hated the mini strokes and all the other random things that plagued you and knocked you down when you were just trying to stand on your feet, for us.
But all those things that I hate that were associated with both of your losses are just that--things. Because growing up with you as our parents meant we did not hate people, because hate was too strong a word. We could hate things. We could hate circumstances. We could hate diseases. But we could not hate people. They were too important, too precious, too valuable.
Diseases. Horrible diseases that took you both, but neither have left me thinking "what if? What if they had gone somewhere other than that club? What if they had chosen a different profession, what if they had been off that night? What if they had chosen a different seaside town where they could celebrate their independence, what if they had just left 15 minutes earlier?"
I know how difficult it is to process grief when you're dealing with the loss itself, alone. I cannot imagine the added element of anger, and of blame, and of having to figure out how to forgive a person for ending the life of someone you loved so much.
I hope soon, that perspective can stop being brought to the surface, again and again. I hope the world you both brought us into stops negating what an important, precious and valuable gift human life really is.
I hope it gets better.
