Sometimes, I just can't find the words to say how I truly feel.  Words just seem so inadequate when a person has deep-seated emotions that are bubbling to the surface.
I guess the words that best express how I am feeling would have to be angry, saddened, frightened, apprehensive, and really alone.
The first thing I learned when I got back from San Antonio was that my brother had pneumonia and was spitting up blood.  The x-rays also revealed a spot on his lung.
I always knew this day was coming.  He smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and has since he was fourteen years old. He also has emphysema and COPD. He has had a horrible cough the last three years.
The mass has grown quite a bit since he was diagnosed with pneumonia, according to his doctor. Today, he had a cat scan and will have another procedure in a day or two to try to go down through his esophagus to get a piece of tissue for biopsy.
This is just history repeating itself.  This exact same time of year in 2006 my other brother was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He died on November 13, 2006.  He had great insurance, got the best care available, but still went downhill so fast.  Because of the great care he had, however, he never suffered terribly, actually dieing in his sleep.
Jimmy was there for Larry to help him go to the bathroom, to put his food in his feeding tube, to bathe him.  He and I spent  two weeks with Larry at M.D. Anderson in Houston shortly before he died.  His kids were next to worthless during his illness.
I fear the same will be true with Jim.  He has one son in his forties who lives out in the middle of nowhere on a ranch. His other son in his thirties,  is a plumber,  and is getting married next month.  They also both live in the Tulsa area. The scariest part of all though is that Jim doesn't have any health insurance.
Then, there's me.  Holly says it's not my responsibility to take care of him, but who's going to do it if I don't?  At the same time, he needs a man to help him.  I am so torn up about this that my stomach is all out of whack again.
That's what always happens to me when I get under this kind of duress. Then, there's my 85-year-old mother, who is going to completely implode when we finally have to tell her. We barely got her through Larry's death. Her health already is declining rapidly. Jim was a help with Mother too.
That's all going to fall to the girls and me now.

The thought of two funerals staring me in the face that I will have to plan alone is just about more than I can deal with right now.

By this time next year, if I am given another year on this earth, I will be the last still living of my generation, in all probability. Thank God I will have my girls and my grandchildren, or there would truly be nothing left to live for. And I know any of them could also be gone in an instant. That is why I ask God every night to keep their guardian angels beside them every moment.

Though I believe we answer for our sins in the next world and not this, I have to wonder why both he and I have had so much death and sorrow in our lives. I argue with God about that when I am particularlyangry as I am tonight.br>


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