Mad as Hell

As I walked through the house this evening, closing blinds, putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and generally puttering, as I have done for literally hundreds of nights, I felt a wrath brewing in my gut. I was reminded of the line from Network, spoken by Peter Finch: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!" And then, typical of my analytic nature, I thought: mad about what, and mad at whom?

And so I cataloged my thoughts:

• the insidious cancer cells - why, out of over 30,000 people, did the  carcinoid cancer strike Janell?
• the doctors - why didn't they figure out that Janell had a heart condition and fluid build-up on her lungs? And why did her oncologist seemingly blow me off on the day before she died, in addition to never communicating any remorse or sympathy to our family?
• the general public - they just kept going on with their lives. People go on chatting and laughing, going to movies, eating at restaurants, "doing their own thing." Don't they know the main pillar of my life was jerked away so painfully, leaving me totally unbalanced. I know that is totally irrational. 
• to be even more irrational, I'm angry at Janell. Why wouldn't she let me call the doctor sooner when she was constantly winded after walking up thirteen stairs? I trusted her knowledge of her body and her disease. 
• but most of all, I'm angry at myself. Why didn't I just pick her up, carry her to the car and take her in to the emergency room? Why didn't I spend even more time with her when she was in the hospital? Why was I gone so much, leaving her alone to deal with her pain? Why couldn't I fix this? Why am I live and she is dead? Why did she leave me?