I lost my father to lung cancer and my grandmother to stomach cancer in the 90s. Now my younger sister is dying of Stage 4 lung, liver and spine cancer. Treatment would gain her only a couple of months so she declined it. I am about 1000 miles away from her and since she is no longer able to speak, my updates come from her daughter. She is no longer in horrific pain -- the morphine takes care of that -- so the waiting is (I hope) not hard on her, but it is very hard for me. No, we were not close. We talked more since her husband died on christmas day than we had in decades. I suppose it is the physical and incontrovertible evidence of the inevitable that has me so stunned. Still, it should not be her. It should not be the baby of the family. It isn't supposed to happen that way.
