If you are a childless widow or widower you have no need to read what follows. You know about loss: you know all about the firsts and the lasts; you know all about the roads taken and not taken; you know about the guilt and the anger and the emptiness; you know about being too young and too old at the same time; you know too much about death.

Or maybe you should read this–because it is about the struggle to define yourself all over again; it is about trying to find or renew your purpose; and most of all, it is about the importance of regular check-ups and going to the doctor when something seems wrong.

Today, I tried to expand my presence back into one room of our house. The study had shrunk down to a small table in the corner where this computer lives. It is where I do the writing and the design-work and the internet surfing this new job requires of me. But the rest of the room had slowly reduced itself to a small trail maintained purely so I could open a window–and now with cold weather arriving that trail was on the verge of vanishing. So I sifted through the papers and magazines and assorted detritus–and while there is still a bit of clutter, I am no longer embarrassed by it.

In the process I came across the reasons I have put the job off–the little bits of Jane’s struggle buried among the clutter: the notes she had written herself about conversations with doctors on the phone, the file from Hudner started a few days after the diagnosis, then abandoned for a different file when they sent us to Dana-Farber, the poem the doctor in charge of the ICU gave me on the morning we weaned her off the machines, the card she never wrote on but left behind just in case, the pages and pages of notes I took at Dana-Farber–and the pieces of the aftermath: the program from the funeral, the guest book from the wake, the pile of sympathy cards.

I feel like the unluckiest and luckiest man in the world in the same heart beat: unlucky to have lost so irrevocably the woman I love in a manner so crushingly unfair–and so lucky to be surrounded by so many good and caring friends.

I cried a lot today. I raged a lot today. Last night made 12 months since we slept together for the last time. Today made 12 months since her admission to the hospital.

I cannot tell you how many times I asked her to go to the doctor about the diarrhea, about the stomach pains, about the flushing. It was a lot. But she always had a reason not to go. And now she is gone.

Learn this: Get regular check-ups, ask questions, tell the doctor truthfully about oddities in your body, and don’t be satisfied with empty explanations.

There is no promise that if you do everything right you won’t die before you want to–but your odds will be somewhat better.

And another year–or twelve–will mean everything to those who love you.