My husband wasn’t supposed to die of cancer. We have friends who survived lung cancer and brain cancer. I survived Hodgkins Lymphoma. Cancer, it seemed to me, was much more treatable these days than it used to be.

Steve did not, technically, die of cancer. In May he died of radiation pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs as a result of the radiation treatments. His lungs began closing in on him. The steroids weren’t working. He was being given the maximum amount of oxygen his body could handle, without improvement.

That last week, each and every time a doctor gave us more bad news, and the bad news quickly became dire, a short line from an old song swept into my head: “Take it, take another little piece of my heart.”

After we were told that life support was the only option, after his family visited and we supposedly “got our things in order,” whatever that meant, his standard meds were traded for drugs to ease his passing. Toward the end, the nurses gently moved him closer to one side of the hospital bed so I could hold him as he left this life.

The following week, in mid-May, as my beautiful friends pulled together the memorial service I envisioned, another old song took the place of Janis Joplin. Stevie Wonder lingered for weeks: “When I recall what we had, I feel lost, I feel sad With nothing but the memory of yester-love.”

Yet it was too soon to visit the memories. I couldn’t even accept condolences at the post office or the Reliable without getting teary. I still can’t. Shock, sadness and anger collided like storm waves gone haywire. How could Steve, a truly good human being, be gone at age 64?

There was no escape. Recently, a childhood friend was visiting the Island and we went out to dinner. While she was in the ladies room (and sneakily paying the bill) a few notes flowing from the sound system left me crying at our table in the middle of a busy restaurant: “You’re just to good to be true / Can’t take my eyes off of you.”

I know, Steve the Deadhead would cringe at a Frankie Valli song, but that catchy tune always made me think of him.

To me, Steve was too good to be true. He was the calm to my inner storms. He made me a better person just by being who he was. Bob Dylan said it best: “I’d be lost if not for you / And you know it’s true.”

One cloudy July day my sister and I did one of our favorite things. We meandered through Portobello Road in Edgartown with its offbeat books, curious odds and ends, and the best soundtrack of any Island store. On that day the tunes were familiar but the singers were unknown to me, a nice change of pace from the same old versions.

The song At Last choked me up and I said to my sister, “All these love songs are starting to piss me off.” But mostly I was just plain saddened by them. Other customers were blissfully engrossed in the literary pickings while my life as I knew it was over. Early on someone had tried to soothe me by noting that I’ve simply entered a new phase of my life. Well yes, but it’s not a phase I want. It’s not a phase I asked for. What I want is my husband back.

Then came that old classic, Leaving On a Jet Plane, that I hadn’t heard in decades. On that day it hit me with an entirely new meaning. It was more than sad, it brought me right back to the hospital bed in those last minutes of Steve’s life. Now he was speaking to me in song: “Now the time has come to leave you / One more time, let me kiss you / Close your eyes, I’ll be on my way.”

Later that July day I went to my first cocktail party as a widow. It was a small group of friends, dear old friends, full of love and compassion. But there I was alone among couples, then alone on the drive home, alone in the empty house. The stillness is jarring every time I open the front door. The sadness is impossible to understand to those lucky enough not to know it.

I’m sharing these personal details to make a point that has nothing to do with music and everything to do with a broken heart. The one thing that hurts over and over, at least in the early stages of grief is a common, well-meaning, yet impossible to answer four word question, “How are you doing?”

When a simple song lyric is enough to flay the grief stricken, that loaded question is, per Mr. Dylan, “Like a corkscrew to my heart.”

May I suggest an alternative? A warm hug and a sincere, “I’m thinking of you.”

Liz Dolan Durkee lives in Oak Bluffs.