Business as Usual

Billy's cancer is back.
"How was your trip?"
 "What, what do you mean?" I stammer. This can't be real.
This is a joke. It is someone else's family. My brother's cancer has come back for the second time.
This time possibly worse. My mother squeezes this unpleasantry in, between asking about the lunch for Mother's Day on Friday, which she is frothing over. Her son may not be alive by the year's end, and she is on to her usual banter- "I hear the food is very good, Donna said so, is that near Trader Joe's?" blah blah blah.
I know I should be numb to this, but it shakes me to my soul. This family can no longer hide in the dark. We are outed for what we are.  I nervously dialed his number {Billy's}- he moved away so long ago, when we were children. I do not know him.
              
We are only a year and a half apart,  but we are worlds apart. We  live on different coasts,  different
beliefs.  Hell, I don't even know his beliefs. I know nothing about him. He is a Chiropractor, who
 has two children. He left home at fourteen to be in the Seminary.  He stayed eight years, and realized that was not the life for him. My mother wanted a Priest in the family. When Billy left the Seminary, my mother had a hard time letting it go. She would not forgive him. Only now I see the yoke he wore from her wanting. She placed such a burden on his young shoulders. Where was he to turn?  Where were any of us to turn. So much for turning the other cheek today. As I stuff  a Snickers bar down my throat as fast as humanly possible, to stifle the tears, the horror from what I feel.
This past week has been a lesson in pain and horror, today is the cherry on top.  I want to be as I was once was  in the past, so many years ago.
Sarcastic, biting, mean. Snarly.  Bulimic..... where are my tools? I am helpless. Damn it.
I will not normalize this. I may not be close to Billy, but my empathy runs deep. How alone he must feel.
Five brothers and sisters, no one flying out there.  My mother talking so nonchalantly about his possible prognosis, as though it were  a grocery list.  My heart is sad. I am glad of this. It tells me I am feeling.

I pray that he recovers . I pray that he doesn't suffer. What do I pray for? I am sad I will never know him.
What I can do, is be the best  parent, wife,  friend. Open my heart to life. Be the best I can be.
There is nothing I can do anymore, from the family I come from. I shall sit in this stew of sadness from which I come. I am recognizing it is not mine. It is from a very disconnected woman called Mother.
This is her legacy, yet once again. More poignant, don't you think, that it is almost Mothers Day.