ad astra per aspera

At the support group last night the facilitators asked us what things we think about that our dead spouses are missing out on.  Everything, he is missing everything.  Our son was barely 3 when he died, he is missing everything.
Magnus planted a flower in a small pot for us to take home with the kids in his group.  On the drive home I asked him about it and he told me “I planted this for momma and daddy but daddy is dead so I can’t give it to him so it’s for momma and Magnus.”
There is a blog I read from time to time written by a woman who has a daughter Magnus’ age who has Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  She is doing well (after a transplant) and has a wonderful writing voice.  Anyway I looked at blogs she follows and picked one and it turned out to be the blog of a woman diagnosed with ALL back in 2007.  She had a stem cell transplant and is doing well.  She went straight to MDA for treatment and had a consultation about a transplant during her first round of chemo.  I had to stop reading it, my brain doing down a path of shoulda coulda woulda’s.
(what if Chris had gone straight to MDA?  He had 3 rounds of chemo in Wichita and they never checked to see if he was in remission, they never discussed transplant for him after learning he was adopted)
It’s totally unproductive, I KNOW.  He didn’t initially have leukemia, he had a lymphoma version of the ALL leukemia so checking for remission isn’t as cut and dry as bone marrow biopsy results.  But mostly it’s unproductive because he’s dead.  He’s dead and that isn’t going to change no matter how many blogs I do or don’t read or no matter how many times I do or don’t re-think choices we made.
When he was diagnosed I didn’t think “why him?”  But now that he’s dead I do think that, I think why didn’t he get to survive?  Why not him?  And there is no answer because that’s just the way things are.

Some words from the book “I hope you have a good life” by Campbell Armstrong:
“In grief we look for the spaces left by our losses to be filled; we seek out similarities, coincidences, omens, signs.  We want life to have meaningful alignments, because otherwise the death of our loved ones are random cruelties in a cruelly random universe.”

*Edit*
I read more of the ALL woman’s blog.  She had a transplant, went into remission, relapsed, and had another transplant.  Her and her husband’s lives where spent off & on between MDA in Houston and where their home was in Louisiana.  They sold their home, were a day away from closing on a new home when she relapsed and they had to move temporarily to Houston again, and had to go back to MDA countless times.  Most adults that achieve remission with ALL will never lead a “normal” life.  I don’t quite know how to express the feelings.  He was taken in 8.5 months.  If he had achieved remission we would of had to relocate to Houston.  I don’t know who would have cared for our son long term, his parents wouldn’t have been able to.  He was diagnosed and 10 days later he was in the hospital and our son was in Texas.  I wouldn’t be able to live with my son again until he died.  There were 3 of us, then two (Chris & I) and then two again (Magnus & I).  He’s been dead over 5 months but it’s been over a year since it was a family of three together.  After he died and I was back with Magnus it was horrible, feeling like I only got to be back with my son because my husband died.  I need to stop and get us out the door for a swimming lesson.  Chris is missing everything.