The question

Still haven't forgiven cartoonist Tom Batiuk for having Lisa Moore die of breast cancer (and for, if anything, making it too abstract ... being taken away by a man in a "Phantom of the Opera" mask?), but I am impressed by one thing.

He announced this year that after Lisa died the strip would flash forward a decade so he wouldn't have to spend time showing the characters, especially her husband Les, mourning. I thought that was understandable. Being well acquainted with mourning, I can tell you it's not fun to experience or to watch. If anything is less promising for comic-strip material than terminal cancer, it's got to be grief.

He flash-forwarded the strip, but is spending the first few days flashing back to the period right after Lisa's death and how Les handled it.

Having been there, I can say Batiuk is dead on. He has Les say that right after Lisa died, he threw himself into the arrangements in order to have something, anything, to think about other than "Did I do everything I could?"

That, I can tell you, is the first thought you have. While Deb was dying, I put in a call to her oncologist, to ask whether there was any last-minute thing to try to save her, to see if he had done everything he could do.

In typical medical-office efficiency, my call wasn't returned until after Deb was gone. When I had him on the phone, though, that wasn't my question anymore.

I asked him if I had done everything I could do.

I got the answer from him I expected, about the cancer being too far gone for treatment, about even he was surprised how quickly she had gone, about there being nothing anyone could do.

I did preoccupy myself after Deb died, mostly with work. Being short-staffed was kind of a blessing because I got to pick up overtime shifts. Even now I take ones I can get, feeling guilty when I can't. I know a lot of it is trying to keep that question away.

I know the cancer was virulent, and I know short of becoming a doctor and finding a cure for cancer there is nothing I could have done.

But ...

I wonder what would have happened if I had been more of an asshole and camped out at Moffitt Cancer Center and gotten them to see Deb even though they told me that they had no room.

I wonder what would have happened if after she told me the lump was growing I took her to the emergency room and forced them to give her a biopsy a couple of weeks earlier.

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

The questions don't plague me as much as they used to. I suppose that's part of acceptance. Still, I remember how real the questions were to me.

Everyone will have to face this grief in their lives, yet no one gets any preparation for it. No one tells you in school, or at work, or at church, that someday you will have to face a loss that will cut you off at the knees and leave you on the ground.

It might be your parents. It may be a sibling. It could be a spouse. But someday, someone who is at the center of your world (and it's probably more than one person) will die, and you will have to deal with unimaginable grief, pain beyond measure and, of course, the question.

But really, what could they tell you about how you will handle it? Some people put their lives back together in a few months; some never get over it.

Still, a little warning would be nice. Maybe they could put it on milk cartons or something.