The book I’ve been reading was written by a woman who grew up in Wisconsin.  She lost her husband in a car accident when she was 27.  It is Widowed Too Soon by Laura Hirsch.

In the book she speaks about her journey through grief and the things that helped her to heal.  There are 5 stages of grief: Shock and Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

I keep trying to figure out where I am in the stages and in some ways I think they started before Gregg was even gone.

For a while now I thought I hadn’t ever really felt much anger.  I’ve even talked to friends about that.  I’m not really an angry person.  That’s not to say I don’t get mad, but I guess I don’t dwell unless I think there is something I can do to change or fix the problem.  Then, admittedly, I can be somewhat obsessive.

There’s a young widows and widowers online forum I joined a while ago.  On it, I am astonished at how angry some of the grieving are.  Many of them are angry with God, their loved ones who passed, or themselves. 

I can’t be angry with God because I feel He only gives us what we can handle.  He needed Gregg to come back to him sooner than we wanted and He obviously had a reason for that.  I hope when I go I will get to learn that reason. 

Sometimes I think that maybe because I got a “pass” with my mother as a child (my mom had cancer when us kids were very young) that I couldn’t receive another one, and I’m ok with that.  Growing up without my mom would have changed my life in a way that I just don’t think would have been positive.  Maybe I never would have gone to ISU and met Gregg had she not survived her cancer.

To be angry at Gregg is just not something in my repertoire.  Though he could and should have had the mole on his leg looked at, as I urged him to do on several occasions, there just isn’t a reason to dwell on that.

Blaming oneself is one feeling that I could probably identify with the best.  There were times when he was alive that I would get so pissed at myself for not standing up and screaming at the doctors about things I wanted done and they denied us. 

There are times when I wonder if I could do anything to help others in this situation now.  I wonder if I could somehow change how the medical world thinks about this cancer.  Could I get them to see that if they would have sent Gregg to a dermatologist years ago, this may never have happened?  Preventative measures for people with a history, or in Gregg’s case just a lot of moles, would do so much.

Why couldn’t they scan Gregg from top to bottom every time he had scans?  On that day we went to the emergency room, we had no idea that his brain was never scanned since the PET scan a year before.  That made no sense to me since they very first doctor we saw told us that Melanoma likes to go to the brain.  When questioned about why they never looked at his brain, we were told by multiple doctors that they don’t scan the brain unless there are symptoms.  Who made that rule?  Who can change it?

Now that he’s gone, I don’t blame myself.  What good would that do?

Until this weekend, I really thought that I hadn’t been angry at all. Then I went to the funeral of Gregg’s Uncle Melvin this weekend.

Melvin had been in and out of the hospital several times over the last 2 or so years.  He had a leg amputated before I ever met him.  Somehow he always managed to come back, even after the doctors told his family to prepare themselves.  One of his daughters called him a cat and that he had finally used up all his lives. 

All three of his daughters and Audrey, his wife, told me how much he loved Gregg.  He was always so excited to hear about Gregg’s flights in his airplane.  They told me that he would always question, “Why did Gregg have to go; Why did it have to be him; Why?”

It was at this moment that I realized I had been angry, because I had thought similar questions, only they were about Melvin.

Why did Melvin keep getting to come home?  Why did he get to live 73 years?  Why did he and Audrey get to be together for 51 years and have children and grandchildren?  Why not Gregg and I?

I guess there is no answer to these questions, at least in this life.  Maybe Melvin knows now. 

It always hurts when our loved ones leave us, whether they were 32 or 73. 

I hope that Melvin’s family can forgive me for having these thoughts.  I hope that God can as well.

I felt ashamed of myself in that moment and apologized to Melvin and to God.

I hope to forgive myself too.

Here's a pic of Audrey and Melvin.