The selfishness of your death

Content warning: Death of family member; cancer; suicide; language

April 8, 2023

Hi mom,

I really don’t know where to start. Do I start with how angry I still am with you? Or do I start with how much I miss talking to you?

I don’t know how to process my grief for your death when so much of it is wrapped up in this ball of anger and disappointment that I never got to say goodbye.

I can’t help but think you knew you were sick for months and decided not to tell anyone.

Did you know? You had to have known. The last time we talked on the phone, I distinctly remembering at the time feeling that something was off. You weren’t your usual self, wanting to talk for hours on end. You sounded tired and I felt like you were eager to get off the phone.

Did you know? You had to have known.

Dad said you were having bouts of dizziness, lethargy, and abnormally dark urine for weeks. Why didn’t you say anything to someone? Why didn’t you want to go to the doctor to try and get better?

Did you know? You had to have known.

I know it’s probably not fair or reasonable of me to make this assumption and to hold this much anger toward you. But it’s the only thing that helps me make sense of what happened. It’s the only logical explanation for why things went south so fast. Without it, you’re just a statistic who got cancer later in life and ravaged your body so fast there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. But if that’s all this is, I can’t really be mad at cancer, right? It’s why I’m mad at you instead.

Did you know? You had to have known.

And the thing that hurts the most is I’ll never know for sure. And if I don’t find a way to deal with the emotions of that, I’m never going to be able to fully process what happened and begin to move on. Not move on to forget you, but just move on and let go of this anger because I know it’s not healthy to keep it bottled up inside.

If you did know something was wrong and you actively chose not to seek a doctor’s opinion and try to get better, why? How could you be so fucking selfish?

I understand it was probably really scary for you and it was easier to just ignore it, but did you not think of dad? Of me? Of anyone else in your life other than yourself? You weren’t protecting us but not saying anything; your silence only made it worse.

You always used to say to me that if you got old and sick, you’d want us to take you to Washington where physician-assisted suicide is legal. You mentioned that multiple times. You viewed it as not wanting to be a “burden,” and that may be what happened here, but I view it as you quitting. It’s also ableist as fuck.

How could you be so fucking selfish?

To me, you made the conscious decision not to say anything and just let death come and take you. That was an action. And that action never gave me the opportunity to come home and say goodbye. You took that from me, and I don’t know how I can ever forgive you for that. You might as well have just ended your own life.

How could you be so fucking selfish?

Did you think that you had nothing worth fighting for? Because that’s what it feels like. If you knew something was wrong, you didn’t even give yourself a chance. You didn’t ask the doctors how much time you had and if there was anything that could be been done. You just rolled over and waited for death to come and take you before knowing the full story. If you had gone to the doctors and they said there was something that could be done, but it was going to be really tough and THEN you decided to just make the most of your last few weeks/months on this earth, I would have respected that decision to not fight. I likely wouldn’t have agreed, but I could understand it and it would have given the people around you who love you enough of a runway to come to grips with everything and a chance to properly say goodbye. But you didn’t give us that chance, did you?

Did you know? You had to have known. How could you be so fucking selfish?

I don’t know where to go from here. I think about you every day and I oscillate between extreme sadness and extreme anger. There are days where I’m fine and then suddenly I’m crying or I’m stressed and anxious and I can’t figure out what caused it. I just want to tell you about all of the things XXXXX and I are doing. I want to bounce ideas off you and get your thoughts. I want to spend all afternoon at a winery listening to live music. I want to listen to you tell the same damn stories for the millionth time.

But you, God, the universe, karma, whatever, took that from me and I don’t know how to cope.

I just really miss you. And I hope you know how much we all loved you.

I’ll talk to you again soon.

- Your son