it is not fair

The thing I remember most from two years ago tonight is a conversation we had just before bed. Becky said to me, "This just isn't fair."

It is not remarkable that she thought that. It is not remarkable that I think that now. But what is remarkable is that this was the first time she ever verbalized that to me. The first time I ever saw a crack in her confidence that she would recover. She was scared; we both were. But she was never as open about her doubt as she was that night. I don't know why it took fourteen months after being diagnosed to express the completely obvious. Of course it wasn't fair.

But Becky had this amazing attitude. It didn't matter how we got to where we were. It only mattered where we went from there. She was always like that. Always easy to forgive mistakes. Back in the days when we were just scraping by, I got a traffic ticket, and I expected her to hit the ceiling. And she didn't. It just wasn't her style, always looking forward.

But on this night, she knew I think that she was going to die relatively soon. Maybe not, maybe that is me imposing what happened and looking for some signs that she knew. I hope she came to some terms with it, though the end happened so quickly we never got to talk about so many things. So maybe that is all that this is. But I think it is more.

I have been reading the Chronicles of Narnia with Katie for the last several weeks. And there is a passage in the third book, called a Horse and His Boy, that I have been thinking about for quite a while. Aslan is the God-character in this series of books. And he appears alongside Shasta during a desperate time for the boy, and Aslan tells him about the places in this journey where he has helped him out. In the meantime, something bad had happened to another character in the book, and Shasta questions him about that. "I only talk to a person about his or her own story."

How wise that is, and how important that is to my own life. The last month or so I have been feeling anger towards God again, which has been relatively rare for me in my grief journey. Certainly it was true in the immediate aftermath of her death. But for the most part, I have been able to appreciate the blessings in my own life because my life is so blessed. I have Katie, what else needs to be said?

But then there comes times when I want to ask all the questions from Becky's perspective. How the heck was this right? How could this happen? It has helped me to focus on the idea that my answers are for me, and that Becky's answers are for her. I certainly hope we get to compare notes someday.