Sunday afternoon will mark the eight-month anniversary of an East Coast doctor informing my brother-in-law that his irreversible pancreatic cancer had spread so swiftly he was likely to die within two to four weeks. He and my sister were shocked, but soon recovered.
Combatively resigned, even if that is oxymoronic, he told my sister he had two remaining objectives, only one of which he could control:
• That his daughter, the younger of their two children, complete her schooling and attain her nursing degree (in 2011) and
• That the family garage, dating back to the early1980s, finally would be emptied out.
As of last week, the garage, like an ugly girl, continued to be ignored for the 25th straight year.
When his family and ours socialized in Arizona seven weeks after his death sentence, since he already had beaten the calendar, we did the turnip thing. We pinched and squeezed the final two drops we ever would enjoy from our relationship.
Mostly from an upright position, he has fought so valiantly the past 240 days that it was easy to forget, in written correspondence and on the telephone, that any day could be his last. He seemed so normal. So vibrant. So involved. So unwilling to surrender. He even has been back working at his trade since the first of the year. Not daily but steadily.
See the World
Early in the spring, his widowed father sent a check from Florida that was going to be their inheritance. Go anywhere in the world you ever have wanted to visit, his normally stoic father enthused. Absent the enormous energy global travel would require, Bruce demurred.
They have traveled heavily around their immediate region because every day he hungers, almost compulsively, for the company of others. A lifetime resident of his hometown, old classmates have formed a steady line into their suburban home, regaling themselves with poignant memories as 60-year-old former students love to do.
Proving that government sometimes has a heart, two months ago his son, one year into a federal security position, was granted an emergency transfer back to his home area for 60 days. It is a shlep, but Andy works near enough to his parents’ home to sleep there every night, which seemed, briefly, to have brightened his father’s day and possibly extended his life.
Sports and politics are my brother-in-law’s most driven passions. Faced with more idle time than he ever has enjoyed, for most of the last eight months he has monitored both as closely as if he were a team owner or a campaign manager.
Lately, though, the calendar against my brother-in-law has broken into a gallop. His mental decline has coldly clutched and hardened. Worse than his ebbing loss of short-term memory has been his inability to notice that he only is partially dressed, that his attire is quite unfit for answering the door.
Still, the worst moments are when he enters the bathroom, believes he is alone, and starts sobbing loudly, pleading for God to give him just a little more time.
He would appreciate the briefest prayer from you.
