Sad News
My mother reports that my sister-in-law had a massive stroke and is basically gone but for a decision to disconnect life support. In the tasteless joke department, I suggested calling Congress about it.
This is my older brother’s second wife, with whom divorce is pending. It’s one of those things you don’t wish on anyone, so I will try not to speak ill here. Despite her faults, her utter wrongness for my brother, and everything she did to him, we got along well. There were things I understood that my brother never did, like her love of computers.
Waaaaay back in the mid-nineties, I made a 386 for each of the families of my three siblings who had children at the time. They had DOS, Windows 3.1, a bunch of games and educational stuff, and a batch file powered menu I created and made fancy with ANSI escape codes.
In my younger brother’s family, he was the primary user, getting seriously into computers as a result and letting the kids use it under heavy supervision. In my sister’s family, her kids used it almost exclusively, with minimal supervision, and the older one as a result became a total geek. In my older brother’s family, it was my sister-in-law who became the primary user of the computer, with modest supervision of the kids. She went from having never used a computer to being a huge fan, to the point when she decided to go to college, she started out in computer science, though she eventually switched to English.
My brother is reportedly taking it as hard as I would expect. He has “kick me” lettered neon on his soul, and no matter how much abuse he takes, he doesn’t fall out of love.
The kids will turn 17, 15 and 14 in July, August and December. I feel bad for them, but kids bounce. I’m more worried about my brother, and about the transition back to custodial parent.
I didn’t exactly expect her to live to a ripe old age. Her health and self-abuse would have made that unlikely. Yet this is just one of those random things, not in anyone’s control. Very sad.
I’m very sorry to hear this news. I’ll be praying for your family.
Posted by jen on 04/19 at 12:38 PM
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