[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img] Even a stoic knows what to say in the presence of births or deaths. He is comforted by finality, clarity in both instants.
It is the almost-but-not-quite in-between period that presently is vexing me.
Two days later, the doctor’s verdict that my brother-in-law’s just-diagnosed disease will end his life approximately next month, is settling in across my family.
My wife asked me again this morning if I had spoken with my sister, and then she was disappointed. Frankly, I am trying to maintain a safe distance because even though words are my business, I feel appallingly ineloquent, inadquate.
For a number of years, I have spent part of every Sunday afternoon penning post cards to those family members who are allergic to the telephone, and who also are permanent foreigners in the hopelessly baffling world of email’ism.
In last Sunday’s card to my sister and brother-in-law, I had cheerfully suggested a small reunion next month when they came to Arizona to visit their just-out-of-college son.
Now I am vexed about what to write this time.
Wishes are hollow.
And at the height of this instant emergency, who cares about anything else?
Family members are starting to arrive for the dreaded death vigil for my brother-in-law.
He was due home this afternoon from the hospital.
Three of my four remaining sisters began landing this morning. His sister lives nearby, and has become a fixture. His widowed, aging father is due on Sunday with his brother, who lives a distance, due to follow.
Sadly, I feel almost phobically relieved that we are thousands of miles removed because my tongue would be paralyzed.
Today Yes, Tomorrow Maybe or No
For many, our lives are anchored in continuums.
My brother-in-law is a football and baseball and basketball fan.
But it doesn’t matter how his hometown teams fare.
Beyond a certain date, he probably will not be available — how is that for a spectacularly clumsy euphemism?
He is a first-tier political buff, one of my few Republican relatives.
But who cares whether healthcare reform passes in the Senate? Last week, he cared fiercely.
Who cares whether Swish Obama is in danger of losing his seasonal Visitor’s Pass to Washington D.C.? Until last week, my brother-in-law cared mightily about Swish turning himself into a full-time road team.
He no longer cares that the first President with strong Muslim tendencies is unable to make his lips form the words “Muslim terrorist.”
Who cares whether Swish cynically threw himself rhetorically across the body of the crazy Muslim jihadist at Fort Hood, denying at all turns that Howdy-Doody Hasan’s spree was a terrorist act?
My brother-in-law has been too dsinterested to hear the latest, that this radical Islamist, a soldier in the U.S. Army, was packing a business card that stated his now well-known enmity toward America because the card contained the jihadi-driven words “Soldier of Allah.”
Upon Reflection
Perhaps we can skip a few Sundays of post cards.
