Next weekend, it will be two years and 11 months since my once robust brother-in-law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given two to three weeks to live.
After numerous scenarios of encouragement – he returned to work on a fairly regular basis, he traveled freely – it appears the final two or three weeks are at hand.
Once strapping, he is a 61-year-old skeleton who seems pressed to keep his weight ahead of his age.
Energy thoroughly sapped, he sleeps constantly.
Being no closer than the only surviving brother of his wife, I presume I will be informed on a need-to-know basis.
That could come at any time, before his death, after his death, even after my death, which could save them an expense.
At Least Whisper
The decision is as removed from me as the weather on Mars.
It is regarded as a permanently unforgivable invasion of sacred privacy for any member of my family to make a personal inquiry about a relative.
Heaven forbid, if anyone possessed the temerity to pose such a bold, unwarranted question, the answer-holder, reliably, would lack the audacity to respond.
Regarded as a singular act of raw cruelty, probing is discouraged at all times.
As long as the person you are curious about is alive, that should be satisfactory.
If the person should die, you probably will be informed.
When, I can’t say.
Not necessarily in time for a funeral, so don’t count on that.
Is It Accurate?
Therefore, the above second- or third-hand information has been delicately stitched together from disparate sources. They shall go unnamed to guard their individual longevity.
When I last telephoned my sister about her husband’s condition, she explained, congenially, she could not speak. She was out and about. That was my point. That was why I dialed her cell instead of the home phone. I wanted to talk to her away from home so she could be candid.
My other three sisters correspond regularly with her but they never make specific inquiries about his condition. This is the way we were raised. Don’t get personal because, well, you don’t need a reason, we were told. You may embarrass the person.
If they want you to know…
Shhhhhh
My brother-in-law and his siblings were raised in a manner that foreshadowed today’s information blackout.
His father had a rule – no one was allowed to speak at the dinner table. Play or shmooze in your head. Only hollow, immensely unappealing silence was acceptable. If you are going to die, do it later at a more convenient intersection.
When my kid sister died, entirely unexpectedly, a year ago last summer, it was so bizarre that it felt like a scene from “The Witches of Eastwick.”
On the seventh of July, I called to wish her a happy 54th birthday. A few months before, she had told me that I should knock off the daily attempts to telephone her, that it was sufficient for us to converse to our birthdays, which are three days apart.
She never explained whether that meant actually speaking by telephone or just crafting a fiction conversation in our heads, hers or mine.
A day or two later, I received a call that she had been found unconscious in bed by her landlady, rushed to the hospital in a coma.
One of my sisters said she had seen this crisis forming for months. But it would have been imprudent to disclose this to anyone. She reasoned that perhaps my fading sister would not have wanted anyone to know.
Within a fortnight, she was dead.
I do not yet know how or why.
My sisters mourned but shrugged.
Or shrugged but mourned.
I laugh. I cry. I emote.
Could I have been secretly adopted?
I would reply, but I was taught that question is too personal.
