I love Matilda's take on the world.
I meant to offer sympathy for Laura's mother and for Wallybee. I have many family members of my heart whose troubles hurt me far more than my blood relatives.
My few relatives are in a dreadful state, and we just got a blow today. My mother is the youngest of five, and her nephew, the son of one of her brothers, is only 8 years younger than she is and was raised by my grandparents, so to her he's like a little brother. He and his wife live in the Atlanta area, but I don't see them often, mostly because he gets all his "information" from talk radio and she is difficult to be around.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I put on my nice person disguise and have called her several times to talk about what chemo is like and what to ask for and I put together some stuff I found helpful, like ginger candy.
Then on Friday, my cousin essentially collapsed. He had apparently been feeling bad for several weeks, but didn't want to say anything because of what was going on with his wife. He was put into the hospital for tests and I went to see him over the weekend, but he was almost completely out of it, shivering, moaning and nodding off every few minutes. Today they got back one of the test results and he has lung cancer.
My mother is not taking it well.
Fuck cancer.