Oh dear - while I am having a small life crisis my husband's family have gone into free fall. In the past week two of my husband's closest relatives have died suddenly. One was his 'aunt' who although not actually a relative had lived with his real aunt for most of their adult lives in a non-lesbian, old fashioned, jolly hockey sticks kind of way. She was an Englishwoman of the old school, always brave and cheerful and on retiring at the age of sixty she began to roam the world on adventure holidays on her own. At one point finding the source of the Nile or something when over eighty. She also served on many secret food industry committees and was our source for the information that the French have been concealing B.S.E. for years. She died from one day to the next while planning yet another trip. Apart from his father she was the last of that generation of his once large family.

Also last week his cousin died of cancer. He was more like a brother to my husband as the two families both had two boys and if they hadn't been slightly different ages you would have thought one of them had been swapped at birth. My husband and this cousin both had fair hair and were not totally thin. They both went to the same university, had the same rather selfish and socially ambitious world view and loved food and drink and upper class country life. Their two brothers are both dark, very thin, strongly religious and keen on charity work, went to more unfashionable universities because they didn't care about social life, are uninterested in making money and live in the centre of town. The illness was like one of those joke scenarios - he mentioned to his doctor in passing that he had a mild backache and was told that he had six months to live. I didn't specially like him as he was rather name-droppy and rude but he has a very nice wife and was one of the most amusing raconteurs I have ever met. Last time I saw him he was telling stories of his friendship with Jacques itaT who he came across when working on one of his films as an extra years ago and we were all crying with laughter. Oh well..................

My husband's brother rang today to say that the house next door to them had burnt to the ground during the night and had caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to their house. Which they had just finished rebuilding so that they could let part of it. He also mentioned that he was already a bit fraught as last week the woman on his other side had collapsed in the garden with a brain haemorrage when he was alone at home and had to drive her to hospital. This had turned into a huge saga and main news item when her hurriedly summoned husband had been attacked by a madman as he ran down the corridor to her room, hampered by a massive bunch of flowers. 'Wife dies as husband lies unconcious outside her door' said the papers. We had no idea that my husband's brother was waiting in the room at the time.

I am carefully not speculating on what is going to happen next. Fate seems to be doing quite well on its own.
- posted by Iris @ 3/03/2004 01:08:00 PM comment