Family of Origin Interlude #1

It's only one person's opinion -- my blog, my opinion -- but if you ask me each of my (divorced) parents sort of botched their communication to us kids that they were potentially reaching the end of their lives.

In Dad's case, it was a logistics problem. Dad was living in Hawaii when he learned that he had some form of leukemia. The four of us offspring were spread across multiple time zones, and one had a job that involved frequent international travel, so phone probably didn't seem the easiest option. And since this was before email took over the world, not all of us had email accounts. Perhaps not surprisingly, Dad's choice to let us know about his situation was to send each of us a copy of the same (typed) letter via US mail. It's been awhile since I've dug out my copy, but my recollection is that it started off with words to the effect of "I'm sending you all this letter so you'll each get the same information at the same time." Yeah, not so much.

The problem with "simultaneous" letters, of course, is that while you can control when you send the letters, you've got no control over when they're delivered or read. So instead of the simultaneous reading Dad had envisioned, what happened instead was that the first one of us to read their copy of letter picked up the phone and started calling all the rest of us. "Have you read Dad's letter?!?" Actually, no. My mail doesn't arrive for another three hours. By the time the last of us opened the letter, everything it contained was very old news. 

Then there was Mum. Mum's answer to the question, "How do I inform my children?," was, "I don't." We still haven't figured out the actual timeline, but the collective sibling wisdom is that Mum knew for some months before she finally told us her lung cancer* had returned and she was opting not to pursue treatment. 

All this came to mind as the PA told me that I had masses in my colon and liver and needed to call a family member.  


* A review of the medical records of my parents, siblings and I would reveal the following cancers (so far): blood cancer, lung cancer (twice), skin cancer, breast cancer, and now colon cancer. In retrospect, I really should've seen this coming.