Losing someone you love...

An earlier (crude) poem I wrote for my friends Jack & Angie were a tribute to their telling me the horrors of "The Lemon Party". Here I am, just days after Angie has passed. Trying to know how to deal with the cycle of life...and death.

What bothers me most is my inability to know how to share final moments and memories with her when I could. As friends, you do not want to intrude on others as they go through the ugliness of cancer. Chemo, X-Rays, hospital visits, recovery etc. I had wanted to see Angie, I wanted to take her and Jack a "bucket of chicken" so they wouldn't have to cook and worry about the "little" things. Jack kept telling me she wasn't ready, or they were just busy or she was not wanting visitors.

I understood and respected this. After all we are not "family". However, aren't we ALL family? Aren't we all sharing in the experience that is this physical life together? Aren't we all somehow, some way connected through the human experience? Should our love for them have exceeded my respect for their privacy.

I feel selfish for feeling this way. Who am I? It's not my place. But I don't give a shit. I NEEDED to see Angie and to express my love somehow some way. I didn't have that opportunity and I honestly fear it will haunt me for the rest of MY life.

How to I resolve this? Resign myself to the fact that it was as they/she would have wanted it? Who the hell am I to intrude on their time in her life? Or do I just accept it as fate? I just don't know. My wife got to walk with her several times as she was working on increasing her energy just days before she left us. That was THEIR time. That was my wife's way to share her compassion, her love and her final moments with Angie. Why did I not get that same opportunity?! I'm so torn between my love and respect for their need to suffer privately and their need to share EVERY possible (physical) moment THEY could together; and my need for closure.

I guess I need to get over MYSELF, instead, I need to thank God that I had the opportunity to know someone as special...as BEAUTIFUL as Angie is (and always will be). I need to look at the moments that I did get to share with her and just be thankful that I was fortunate and blessed enough to share some of those moments with her. She has impacted me in so many ways...I only hope that wherever she is now, that a piece of ME and the moments that we shared are with her now too.