2001:November:22
11.22.2001

OK, I don't want to bum you out on American Thanksgiving, so if you don't want to hear something sad, don't read on.

My Aunt Marg, whose hip was not healing, has been diagnosed with cancer in her lung and spine. After a car accident that almost killed her, years of alchoholism, and two hip replacements. Now this.

Uncle Jack won't leave his bed--says he can't feel his left side, although the doctors say it is hysteria. he is peeing in a tomato can at his bedside.

Aunt Marg seems strangely placid. Like she suspected the worst and is relieved to have it confirmed. Now we all have tasks. No more worrying about the addictive painkillers. Just stop the pain. And bring her buttery croissants.

Her grandson, Cory, who is 10, gave her his diskman, even though he is almost deaf and the only way he can blast music enough to hear is with the headphones on.

But Jack, geez. Get a grip! It is awful, and we know your pain in real, but we can't care for you, too. Everyone telling him he has to stay strong.

I called my grandma and told her the situation, and even though she is 90 and bedridden, she is sharp as a knife. I thought he needed his big sister to give him a talking-to.

The first couple of times she called him, he yelled at her. The third time, they spoke. And he was pissed, but he sounds better now.

"I always knew that if anything happened to Marg, he would fold," says my Grandmother.

I am Aunt Marg's favorite of Jack's neices, she says. She always seemed interested in my writing and my stories and never talked down to me.

She grew up in Wawa Ontario, on the shore of lake Superior. One day she walked down to the lake, watched the sun set and listened to the loons and something moved her deeply.

That night, she found a quiet corner and wrote a poem--a beautiful, unsentimental poem called 'my lake superior'. It hangs framed in her living room. As far as I know, she never wrote another poem again.

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