Six Months Gone

Does it get any easier?  In most every way, no.  Having had these past 6 months to reflect on the what might have beens and the why didn't I questions I find myself feeling awfully inadequate and foolish.  Before 6 October, 2010 I had all the answers; now I have none.

182 days have passed since that fateful phone call.  175 since the service at Our Lady of Fatima.  Not one minute, though, without the memory of my son burning in my brain.  Yet, I know I am not alone with these thoughts and feelings. His mother, sisters, girlfriend, grandparents, uncles and aunts, nieces, nephews and cousins along with Geoff's many friends and co-workers have expressed similar feelings.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  There was going to be a long lifetime of visits and get togethers, accomplishments, events and milestones.  I saw it in my mind's eye.  I had no doubt.  I was wrong.

I've read and re-read the autopsy report.  I've requested and been provided additional opinions on the information and conclusions of the examiners.  I've scoured the internet and spoken with doctors in Australia and California performing my amateur freelance medical investigation and found no reward for my effort.  There is no answer as to the why.  There's no comfort in hearing that the doctors didn't know Geoff had been stricken with Lymphoma for a second time; that their years of training and practice didn't provide them with the knowledge to anticipate this recurrence of the cancer or the ability to arrest the malignancy even if they had found it.

For every thing we know it's now obvious to me there is a huge imbalance with that which we do not.  I've spent my life gathering facts, devouring printed words, listening to other's opinions and can only now conclude that maybe I wasn't really paying attention as well as I might have believed.  The lessons I thought I learned were perhaps not those that were being taught.  Many things I used to think important seem trivial in retrospect.  I want my son back.  I want another chance to be a better father to him.  But that will never be.  It's a lesson I've only learned too well.