When You're Running Out of Time
We believed we’d lose my father-in-law within a year.
While I have a million things I want to share with you (especially about reading The Salt Path in our Life-Changing Book Club), and my upcoming launch (free, fun), instead, I’m sharing the opening of an essay I wrote that Midstory published in February about my relationship with my father-in-law. He died almost a year ago.
Here’s the opening. The rest is published on their wonderful Substack:
“On Halloween, my father-in-law was rushed to the emergency room. My partner and I discussed what might be wrong. His dad couldn’t swallow, had a tightness in his chest, some pain. Not a heart attack, no. Maybe anxiety? That seemed a likely answer—several years of caring emotionally for his wife, who has Alzheimer’s, added to the stress of medical appointments, the burden of administration, the small magnified tasks.
None of our imaginings led to esophageal cancer. As my partner talked with his brother on his cell, I sought a prognosis from the ghastly fortune teller of Google: a crystal ball that became bloody. An average of eight months. Often less, depending on how far it had spread. Lethal. His parents lived on the other side of the country, thousands of miles from our prairie lives, so my partner caught a plane and I stayed home with our children.
For the next few days, as a series of intrusive tests were performed, we considered we’d get five more years. Then we hoped for two.
The story changed. We believed we’d lose my father-in-law within a year. We planned to visit at Christmas.
We had less than a month….
At the time of publication, I told
: “The experience I share here lingers with me, saying something about how we connect with our families and those we love, helping me explore the messy and complicated world we live in. Losing my father-in-law was painful, shocking, and sudden. Writing about that gave me insight and a shimmer of beauty. I hope it does this for you, too.”Tell me, how are you? What are you reading that you love? Have you been turning the pages of The Salt Path with me? Have you read a book that has changed your life?
xoxoxo
Alice
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner who moved twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked. Join me for a coffee break on here. Xoxo
Last year, I lost three of the elders in my life - both my parents and my mother-in-law, all in the space of 6 months, each to vastly different illnesses. I cared for my mother - a brave and independent woman - in the last few months of her life, whilst grieving my father's unexpected death. Memories can be sudden and bittersweet, or quiet moments of remembering sunshine and happy days. It is always too soon.