Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. A solo, a duet, a trio, a symphony, a passacaglia.

Anger at him passed long ago. You remember the first dissipation, lying in an ER with a migraine. He had taken you and waited while they ran you through a CT scan and an IV. In the dim room, you looked over at him, browsing his iPhone. Just there, patiently waiting and entertaining himself, unconscious of your observation. You just had a vision of a film, burning through and melting away, like an old movie caught in the projector. You felt anger escape and evaporate.  Sometimes it flared, coming of a piece with the irrationality of fear, shoring up the denial, and working its way into bargaining.

You saw the condition of his body, the pain, the bags of medical supplies that would plague the rest of his life. The bags that had already plagued his life. Your mother remembers something lost in the shuffle of dialysis and intensive care. She remembers that the surgeon mentioned spots on the bones in the X-rays. Your insides spasm. You don’t blame him for giving up. You aren’t angry at him.

You are angry that you did not stay. You did not want to leave before, and you were not at all certain that you would see him at Thanksgiving, his one last wish that you could not even manage to grant until you fell into the fear. You are angry that your rational mind told you that you must go home, begin classes, pick up daily life, push this out of your mind to get through the day, and tell yourself every minute that everything was getting better. Lie through your teeth to everyone else to reassure them, reassure yourself, that all looked well.

You are angry that you did not listen to your guts, which told you to stay until he was out of the ICU. Stay until he was out of the hospital. Stay until he was home. You are angry that you did not write to HR and ask about Family and Medical Leave Act. You are angry that you let their reputation for incompetence be your excuse. You are angry that you were not there with him every day to show him that you love him, that you had not abandoned him.

You are angry that you were not able to hold his hand and work with him to the acceptance of the end. To be there with him and tell him that you will always always miss him. To apologize for your bad patches. To make up for the reason that he would feel abandoned. To apologize for not waking to his need decades sooner. To take care of him to his end like he took care of you at your beginning. To hold his hand and tell him that, if he wants to go, you understand, you will be there with him to the end.  You are so very angry that you did not do that.

You resent everything and everyone who encouraged that rational voice. You tell yourself that you would be here, in this same place right now, anyway. Nothing would have changed the outcome; but the outcome is not really the point, is it? You just want to wake up and be back, a month ago, and have the strength to remake that decision, to tell everyone else to fuck off.

You are furious that you felt you had so little time remaining and you still left.

You continue to resent everything that you have to do now to go back into normal life, the very same things that brought you back three weeks ago. You resent everyone who tells you that work will take your mind off of it, that getting things done will take your mind off of it, that moving forward will make it all hurt less.  They mean well, you know.  You’ve said the very same things for the very same reason, even to yourself. Like the lie of everything is getting better, these are all just wishes.

So, you restrain yourself from snapping back that they were so very wrong before, why should you believe them now, they should just confine themselves to “I’m sorry, my condolences” and not offer this advice. This was not their call, this is not their fault, they mean well. Some of them have been here.

For you, right now, anything that is not mourning him insults his memory. Anything that is not mourning him continues the mistakes that you made in his life all of your life because you lacked emotional fortitude.

Your anger is at yourself.