As this is written on Sunday afternoon, hours before the start of Rosh Hashana, we are on death watch at our home.
My brother-in-law, who is 61 years old, and my maiden aunt of 93 summers surely are descending into their final hours.
He has suffered and laughed back during a torturous 34-month struggle against cancer.
Confronting Alzheimer’s, she, who never married, has been declining for several years for age-related reasons, but was present enough to absorb my weekly postcards.
One had a rich sense of humor and the other’s was more middle-brow, even occasionally visible.
In our family, the two were as close as Portland, ME, and Oregon’s Portland. Probably, neither would be pleased to know they evidently are leaving the world together, though not nearly hand-in-hand.
My aunt was vivid proof that maiden ladies can turn in lifetime report cards sparkling with lofty achievements, if making positive differences in numerous lives may be measured that way.
She will be remembered for one shining legacy. From the age of 20, family legend goes, she never allowed a single day to disappear without replying memorably to the question of how she was feeling.
“Ohh,” she would reliably say, summoning a groan that was born just beneath her feet and rose rapidly through her pretty face and out the top.
“I feel awful. My word, I do. And I don’t know what’s wrong.”
The succinct answer was nothing.
Each generation of our family could not allow the sleeping dog of our aunt’s health to just lie there, in permanently miserable condition. They had to ask. And she had to answer.
In 93 years and one month, my aunt probably was ill for two or three days before her last round of deterioration.
My brother-in-law is a hero, and many know his story. On Nov.9, 2009, his condition first was diagnosed. The doctor told him and my sister that he would be dead in two to three weeks.
Not a chance. He just kept getting up every morning. He would lose weight, vomit, lose interest, and then rebound in every area with ferocity.
He returned to his job, and still was going in until very lately.
Last I heard, though, he was sleeping all the time, his wracked body vanishing to a ghostly weight.
One more telephone call, and the suffering of both mercifully will be ended.
