i'm sorry

i'm sorry. those are the words you find yourself screaming and sobbing sooner or later when you lose someone or some thing precious to you. it may make no sense whatsoever. you may have done nothing to cause their death, you may have done everything to prevent it, you may have taken the very best care of them. somehow, though, deep in your psyche you feel responsible. sometimes. not always. but when it comes it's devastating.

that's how i've felt.

i can't say i'm sorry enough.

when bob first complained of a gagging sensation and inability to swallow i can look back and reassure myself that i did urge him right then to go to the doctor. but he wouldn't. he was TOO BUSY. maybe that's why i hate those words now. they are such bullshit words. i hate people who are too busy. they're too busy running away, whether it be from emotions or illness. if you stay busy enough you can keep pain at bay. so you think. but in the end it will get you. so spare yourself, be brave and make time for it now. while it counts. in bob's case we missed the chance to find out he had cancer 3 months earlier. maybe it would have made a difference. i'll never know now.

i urged him to go to the doctor every time it happened, but he wouldn't go. maybe he was scared to find out why. maybe he knew it was bad and didn't want to know for sure. he used to say "if you go to a doctor they'll find something wrong with you". as if you'd always be fine...as long as you never went to that doctor. why didn't i make him go? i tried, i know i did, but you can't make a grown and stubborn man do anything. and he was, after all, too busy. he had a job he felt responsible for reporting to every day on time, just like he had at every job before that. he never took an extended lunch hour. sometimes he reported back for work before he was even due.

i didn't know it, but he was actually going to lunch that summer more than he ever had before at any time in his history. i know why now. he was trying to eat as much as he could to battle the way the cancer was whittling his body away. candy, potato chips, fried chicken. after his death i found candy wrappers and empty chip bags in his truck. he was battling cancer with junk food. he should have spent one lunch hour in the doctor's office instead of Zee Mart's parking lot, enjoying their fried chicken. the doctor would have sent him in for an endoscopy right then. maybe before the cancer had the chance to network its way down to his liver.

i stupidly waited the marina season out and cancer had that much more feeding time. he would not agree to go until late october, even delaying one appointment by one week. but by then it was too late. i used to yell at him in a rage when he'd be incapable of finishing his dinner. when he'd dart into the bathroom as it came up immediately. i'd yell "do you want to end up talking through a hole in your throat with a computer voice?" obviously, i had the wrong tube, and may have known it, but i wanted to make some impact, however crass. i actually think that was the very thing that got him to finally agree to a doctor. that and the fact that by then his knees and his back hurt too.on halloween eve he told me the doctor didn't seem to care much about his swallowing, she was more concerned with the fact that his liver felt enlarged. "don't tell my daughter", he said. she was heading over to the house with the children for halloween. "she'll worry."

that was our last night of innocence. blissful ignorance.

when his blood test results came in he was impossibly anemic and soon a CT scan showed 3 tumors in his liver, one six inches in diameter. and then an endoscopy showed esophageal cancer. stage four cancer. and ten weeks later bob was dead.

why didn't i take better care of him? i am not sure why we do it, why we blame ourselves sooner or later. i am sure i am not alone. other 'survivors' must feel this way too. i know so. you can't explain it to a shrink much less a friend or family. in fact, i feel certain others must blame me too. as much as i blame myself. why didn't she take better care of him? how did she not notice all the weight he was losing or his abrupt and odd appetite for high calorie food? anybody else would have gotten him to a doctor sooner. he wouldn't have died. i guess it's easier to blame myself than it is to blame bob because he already suffered the ultimate price. and it's hard to comprehend that maybe no one is to blame. doesn't it have to be someone's fault?

but the 'i'm sorry" isn't just for failing to keep him alive. it's for every single wrong i ever committed. it's just that the worst was that i couldnt save him.

sometimes, crying, you need something to say. something that means something, something you can blurt between gasps for air. "i'm sorry" is perfect and, like the tears, relieves some of the pain.

until next time.