Ex-Husbands and Grown Children

My favorite youngest son told me his father has a mass on one lung and is going in for a biopsy. Now, I should have been able to say something reassuring to him, but I couldn't. Instead I was thinking, God I hope he has been happy these last years, at least happier then we think. My guts are screaming not fair, not fair. He is only 48, he doesn't smoke. Mass, lung, cough, feels bad, everyone in his house smokes, 2+2= CANCER NOT FAIR NOT FAIR NOT FAIR.

Of course it could be, and probably is, something else. Something that can be cured, something that won't force him to make decisions. You know the ones. Something that won't make him so sick and try to steal his dignity and self.

All this went round my skull quickly and all garbled, and all I could do was snifle. No support or gentle assurance that he would be ok. My sweet youngest boy, suffering, no help did I give.

Shifting gears a little, my present spouse is one of those men who thinks that when you get a divorce the other person is gone from your life as if they never really exsisted. I, on the other hand, only had children with people I liked well enough to keep as friends, even when there was no domestic bliss. Youngest boy's (boy is a 26 year old man)father's present wife feels the same way my spouse does, except maybe to an even geater extent. So ex is not allowed to talk to me on the phone anymore by his ex. Now my spouse would not tell me not to talk to boy's father, but he certainly does not mind that I don't. Anyway, my ex, the boy's father, is still my friend, and the father of my children, and part of the vessel of our family memory, and I don't want him to die.