Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Wednesday morning I get an email from my mother saying that her second husband has diabetes. While I feel curiously ambivalent toward his predicament, I now have to deal with my mother's unrealistic expectations that I should be torn up over it. Firstly, it is her second husband. I have got over hating him but you still shouldn't leave us alone in a dark room. Secondly, since one of my very best friends has had diabetes since childhood and has gone into insulin shock many times, I'm having a hard time getting worked up over someone having to cut the M&Ms from their diet.

Later that afternoon I got another email that the father of another of my very best friends died that morning. He'd had a heart attack some months ago but left the hospital, was being medicated, and felt fine when he spoke on the telephone the night previous. So he's back in India, trying to get everything arranged. I'm sure a last-minute flight to India ain't cheap, plus I don't know how his mother is taking it. I think I met his father once, briefly, several years ago but I didn't really know him. But I know Sudhir and his sister, as well as Sudhir's son, and I grieve for them.

This afternoon my wife calls to say that her uncle, who for all intents and purposes served as her father, called to get her to her mom's house on Saturday because he had some news he would only tell them in person. Given that he had open-heart surgery some years ago and has continued to struggle, we knew right away the subject of the discussion. When she called back to see if they could meet tomorrow instead, he admitted that his doctor has given him six months to live. Since he couldn't get out of bed for a few days recently because he couldn't move his limbs, we fear that six months is the optimistic end of the range.

Having lost my father when I was five, watching one of my friends lose his father and my wife about to lose hers is very difficult for me. I'm a pretty emotional person but I don't feel comfortable sharing this kind of thing with acquaintances. Luckily I have an office at work where I can close the door when I get bad news like this. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I hope that it is just a boringly normal day.

This is shaping up to be a pretty shitty week.