For those of us foreseeing that "things are going to get very bad," Sherrilynn Ifill offers some valuable pragmatic tips about surviving

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
(I'm sorry to hear this)

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
I remember you telling me about your relationship with your brother. Unfortunately, as you know, I can relate.
What a splendid, warm gesture from your friends. Friends like that are precious and so rare.

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
Yes, some people really do live their beliefs. It's heart-warming. It seems to me that many of the people who reach out to help others are members of a "community", whether a church, a neighborhood, firefighters, etc. It seems to grow hearts.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Yes. And lots of empirical evidence shows that people at the bottom of the economic pyramid give proportionately much more out of what they have than those at the top give.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Yes, I'm deeply touched. When my husband and I were finally permitted to marry in 2014, those same friends organized a large celebration for us, spending lots of money hiring a first-rate band, having invitations designed and cut. Really good people.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Thank you. Heavy days right now, especially for my brother, whose suffering is intense but who remains very brave through it all.

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
Tell them a total stranger thinks they're wonderful!

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
Is he on hospice? I can't understand anyone being allowed to suffer through their last days. When my mom was dying, the SOB surgeon denied her pain meds "she could become addicted"... WTF? She's dying! But that was 45 years ago. Pain management has become more humane. Unless his is just not touchable. Then my heart cries for him. (I'm a bit of a nurse crusader, as you can tell.) ️‍🩹

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Yes, he's in hospice care now. At a distance, it's hard for me to know how much of the pain is physical and how much is the pain of dealing with cancer for such a long time now. I do think the hospice caregivers are providing medicine to keep the physical pain controlled. His ex-wife is also a former hospice nurse of many years and is helping to provide ongoing care for him, for which I'm very grateful. He left her and she could be bitter — but she's a really good person.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse I'll do so. We have ties binding us over years. My aunt taught Pat, the wife, in college, and my uncle was academic v-p when she was in college. I hired Pat to teach psychology and chair our school's social studies department not knowing any of those ties, then found them out, and we've been close friends ever since — as with her husband Wendell, who officiated at my marriage to Steve in 2014. I'm not a churchgoer, but give a monthly donation to their church out of gratitude.

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
It would be very hard for a hospice nurse (probably most nurses) to turn their back on any person who is actively dying. Sounds like she is a person of good character. My thoughts remain with you and yours. ️‍🩹

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
The tapestry of life. It's amazing when these wonderful coincidences happen.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Yes, isn't it? Six degrees of separation…. These are friends I wouldn't have known when we were all growing up, for the simple reason that I'm white and they'r Black, and a color line, an adamant one, separated us as we grew up. I'm all the more overwhelmed to get to know them now that we're adults and can trample that color line down as it long since should have been trampled down.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse Thank you. My brother was not good to his wife — not good in his abrupt choice to leave her and their marriage after 30 years and 4 children. It would have been normal for her to turn her back totally on him after that. It's really to her credit as a human being not to have done that. I'm very grateful to her. She and I are not close. She's at a different place in terms of religion and politics than I am. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing that she's a good person, for sure.

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
Hopefully your brother was a decent father to their 4 kids, and maybe she has been kind/generous for them, so they wouldn't be bitter or have to take really polarized sides. Well, whatever her reasons, thankfully he's not alone.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse I think the four children are generally really linked to both of their parents. One has serious mental problems and addiction problems and I'm not sure ever what's going on with him. I find my niece much more sympatico than her brothers, and have perhaps shared that with you. She has an emotional maturity the three males lack — always has had that emotional maturity in comparison to them. What I like about her is that she and I can talk frankly about her father, & at the same time
/1

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse

keep alive the awareness that we both love him deeply despite the ways in which he baffles both of us. I think that as a father, my brother was very disconnected from his children, probably because through the marriage, he was dealing with his own unacknowledged problems. I also think that as adults, the three who are mentally stable understand why he was often disconnected, and have mustered the ability to forgive and love. Their mother has been a point of stability for them.

/2

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
Your (ex) sister-in-law is a good person. Hopefully your brother has thanked her.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lolonurse She is a good person, for sure. I do hope my brother has thanked her, too. He could not have gotten through the last several years without her.

lolonurse

@wdlindsy
2 of 3 devices went kerflooie in the last 2 days, so I've been working on replacing them. Plus preparing for my son & family's visit. If I don't answer, I will. I hope you & your husband have a nice, easy Thanksgiving, with no sad news just yet.