I finally heard from my daughter-in-law. She sounded so depressed and said that they were not doing okay, but that my son would get in touch with us when he could bear to talk about it. My heart is breaking. I sat on the deck yesterday with my husband and cried because I just felt so helpless. It's only one step from being about as helpless as I suspect my friend Kay is feeling right now. Her daughter Trinna (a cancer survivor) has just been told her tumor has returned. Trinna is a year younger than my son Stephen. It doesn't help me to feel better about our own disappointment, but I certainly would not trade places with Kay.
I was also reminded yesterday that it was the third anniversary of my uncle's death. Jim (known to me as Bobo) died before his 55th birthday of pancreatic cancer. I am a few months older than he is/was (which tense is appropriate?) because he was my grandmother's menopause baby ("Oops!"), and we grew up more like brother and sister or close cousins, not uncle and niece. I stay in contact with Sylvia, his widow. She's such a sweetheart that I'm sorry I never had a chance to get to know her well. She lives near New Orleans. I think of Bobo often; he was funny, smart, witty, talented, and (like many of my grandparents' children) extremely damaged emotionally. He fought his own addiction demons, as so many of my family have. He did not deserve to die so young. He's left such a hole in so many hearts. The photo today is of Bobo.
All in all, this whole past week could be backed up and restarted on a different track. I wish I could wake up and discover that it's been a nightmare.
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