Another anniversary of sorts. 6 October, 2013; it's 3 years since Geoff died. And, again, I get reminded of the numerology associated with this date on the calendar each time it comes around: the 6th day of the 10th month of the 13th year of the century. 6+10+13=29. Geoff would have been 29 years of age if he was alive today. It will happen this way every year as long as I live. Not that I would ever forget or need to be reminded.It never has seemed appropriate that we would refer to this date as an "anniversary". It's always seemed to me that an anniversary connotes something happy to remember and I have struggled to come up with a better label for this day than an anniversary. I decided to do some research and discovered that the word anniversary can be used to mean a day to celebrate or commemorate a past event that occurred on this date. OK - I can live with commemorate. I can live with anniversary, then. It's much harder living without my son.
Those that know me know that I will post a link to this epistle on Geoff's Facebook page. You can imagine my shock and sadness when I discovered a few weeks ago that Geoff's Facebook page had disappeared, vanished into the ether. I only have a few ways that I can spend time with the remnants of Geoff's life and that Facebook page was a precious one. We were able to get it back and could never learn the why of its disappearance but the fact that it did was just another reminder for those of us that love and cherish his memory of just how fragile those threads are that remain.
This year also saw the finality of the inquiry into the why about Geoff's death from Lymphoma. An independent Medical Advisor commissioned by the Healthcare Commission of New South Wales reached the conclusion that Geoff's care "did not deviate from an appropriate standard", that "Lymphomas apparently can have extremely unpredictable paths and can appear quiescent for years and recur or new different histological lymphomas can develop in susceptible individuals. This is what appears to have transpired with Mr Loe". I don't have to agree. I don't. I still wonder "What If?".
Last year my father, Geoff's Grandfather, was sick when I wrote on the 2nd anniversary. He died a few weeks later. While its sad and we miss him very much I can understand the chain of events that lead to his death at the age of 81. I was also able to witness the effort made by my dad's doctors and discuss the inevitability of his diagnosis. It helps in the understanding. It helps with the acceptance.Intellectually I can accept the progression of the lymphoma that took Geoff's life. I know what it does. I know, clinically, what happened. What I don't know are the answers to the questions "Why?" or "What If?" . I don't know if I ever will.
