Ask anyone who knew Janice. All will say she is strong. She was. She had met with resolve the death of her beloved brother to COPD, her husband to leukemia, her daughter to an automobile accident. Friends were going at increasingly closer intervals “Strong” was fatiguing.
Lying on the bed in Mazie’s spare room Janice stared at the ceiling. Water spots from the leaky roof last year formed a smiley face. “Glad you’re happy”, she said aloud. “Nobody else is. Mazie sure isn’t. And where are the kids?”
Mazie’s son in Arizona, her daughter in Illinois knew their father was terminal. Mazie explained they had busy lives with jobs and kids of their own. Getting away was not easy. It had been the same when Jared died.
Janice remembered when her father died. She and Charlie were six hundred miles away. Charlie had just started a new job; the children had just started the school year. Janice flew home for the funeral and returned home the next day.
It had not always been so. When her grandfather died the whole family was there, acting like families no longer acted. Now children, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews were scattered. They were busy with their lives. The extended family was dead.
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