It is hard to believe, but it was less than three months ago when this whole thing started…
We were on our way home after a holiday in Malaga, Spain and switched our mobile phones on in the airport. Somehow, a text message tracked us down to tell us that my uncle had been diagnosed with lung cancer. For a time it seemed that it might be operable, and he had appointments set up with the best that the NHS could offer, but in the end a biopsy showed that it was inoperable and he and my aunt packed up their things and moved back to Cape Town, where his family (and mine) all live, to begin radio/chemotherapy - and, essentially, to get ready to die… he was been given 6 to 12 months to live.
We helped them pack up their home into boxes and decide which of the accumulated bits and bobs of 25 years were worth keeping and which should be thrown away or given to charity. And then we said goodbye, knowing that while my uncle might survive until I go home for a holiday in March, this could well be the last time we see him (this side of heaven). For us it was hard (they have been like surrogate parents to us in the few years that we have lived in the UK), but for my aunt it was even harder - not only was she leaving her home of the last 25 years and the country where she was born, but she was leaving her frail and elderly (92 yrs) mother and her mentally handicapped twin sister behind to go with her husband…
It was some six weeks later that we got the news that my great-aunt had fallen and was in the hospital. This was a Thursday and we made plans to go and visit her on the weekend - by Friday afternoon she had developed pneumonia and we were told that she had less than 24 hours to live. My aunt was on that evening’s flight from Cape Town and we rushed down to the hospital to spend the last hours with her. My aunt made it in time to say goodbye and my great-aunt died peacefully and quietly.
More packing up of a collection of life’s debris, more decisions on what to keep and what to give away and my aunt returned to be with her husband (what else could she do) leaving her sister alone (apart from us of course…).
As if that was not enough, this morning I get the news that their son-in-law (my cousin’s husband) has died of a heart attack. He’s in his 30’s and they have been married for only a couple of years. She is 8 months pregnant with their first child and still in the process of recovering from ME.
What more, LORD? How much more heartache and pain can you send to one family? Oh yes, their one son died in a car accident several years ago and their other son has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair - lest we forget…
This sucks nearly as much as it blows!! And I don’t really even have to live through any of it - I’m just an observer in this episode of life’s unfolding tragedy… I’m telling you, if I get to heaven and find that this family are not seated at one of the top tables, heads are going to roll!!
Grim