What began as a sudden-shock vigil before growing into a marathon death watch ended several hours ago.
Three years, two months and 14 days after my brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and given three weeks maximum, he wore out and was forced to quit fighting to live this morning in a Cleveland suburb.
He died on what would have been his mother-in-law’s 96th birthday.
Bruce and Mom were nearly the same ages when they died with the same diagnoses. She survived two years and died at 64. He was 62.
Mom missed all of the joy from Bruce’s 1976 marriage to my sister. Her cancer was discovered in the third year of their marriage, and the rest of her life soon morphed into a tragic blur dominated by nail-sharp pain and unarticulated suffering.
Strange, isn’t it, how sometimes you just know what is coming?
On Oct. 15, 1981, my wife, our newborn son Matthew and I were sort of on vacation, although I went to my office in Santa Monica that morning, arriving as usual at 6 a.m.
At 6:15, the telephone buzzed.
This was eons before caller ID.
Without a clue, I knew it was my wife with The News.
I started sobbing as a picked up the receiver.
I said “She did, didn’t she?”
That is not a typo. I did not say “She died” because the realistic word seemed too harsh.
Sixteen years ago this spring, when I found my brother dead on the bathroom floor, I also could not tell my family he had “died.”
When I called my sisters and my father, I said “Paul is gone.”
My brother-in-law was valiant, stubborn and heroic, a model for me.
Six weeks after being diagnosed, he and my sister flew across country to an Arizona hamlet to visit with their son, serving with the Border Patrol. We drove the 400 miles to spend our last visit with them.
Bruce and my sister, against everybody’s advice, returned to Arizona once more last month to see their son.
It was unbelievably painful, emotionally and physically.
And now the suffering is over.
Or is it?
