Waking before dawn

[smokingboot]

The biopsy wound is a pin prick, less than a freckle.

Up since 5, now tired again. Bro isn't getting back to me. I feel that he knows there is a problem and he's hiding. Of course it might not be my problem, he may be dealing with some serious issue of his own. He has sent a one word reply to my text to call; Soonish.

OK, soonish. I'll leave it til the test results return. After all, it may be nothing. They warn me that's extremely unlikely, but no point troubling him til I know. Having said that, what I am asking for as a special necessity now is nothing more than he should be doing at any time. He has got used to a world in which what's expected from everyone else is considered an extraordinary favour from him unless he feels like it. I get that maybe this is how he survives (why are we so strange? I always assumed that we're not normal in the same way no-one is normal, but now I suspect that actually we are way out there) but he has to be able to entertain the notion that if I die before he does, whether it be this, or being run over by a truck/struck by lightning/ disassembled in a teleporter/eating a puffer fish liver, I am not immortal and should the unthinkable happen he must do more for Mother.

I'll leave this for now too. Even reading and writing feels like too much. My brain is still shockfoggy.

But it's worth noting that yesterday's rugby was at once frustrating and well worth watching. R and I are spending excellent quality time together.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

As a bystander at the distant edge of the crowd, I kinda don't think there's anything you can do to induce Bro to become more involved with yr mother.

It's partly a personality thing—and the personality thing means that his relationship to her is very different from yr relationship to her. But also, he had his own brush with mortality recently, and his brush with mortality is related to (among other things) his reactions to stress. If yr mother is a source of stress in his life, avoiding closer contact might be a survival mechanism for him.

Yr mother's Spanish family is pretty cohesive, yes? They're probably doing a lot already. And for all sorts of reasons, they may be the best long-term resource.

[smokingboot]

Having said that, he could be ill himself, or be caring for someone who is ill. I should be more gentle.

[smokingboot]

I can understand that technique but...

The glue that holds the Spanish family together is my mother's younger sister, now over 70, who is constantly looking after everybody,and whose list of obligations gets longer every passing year. She keeps an eye out for Mum, as does my remaining uncle, but I cannot ask much more from them than they do. Mum doesn't want to talk to anybody everyday except my brother and me, she has retreated from family involvement and won't even join them for Xmas if I am not there. Without our engagement Mum will be an utter hermit, and her already very dodgy mental health could reach terrible levels. This needs attention from bro and me. I am not asking him for my depth of involvement. But stent or no stent, I think it is reasonable to expect something more than silences that can stretch for months at a time.