Grandpa's got cancer

Mistress took little S and went to her parents for a couple of days. I thought I would love the time home alone, relieved from duties and stress. I hate it. Come back! All I do is long for the two of them.

So this was very good for me. It's good to miss people sometimes.

Unfortunately, yesterday Mistress' father got his diagnosis - the prostate cancer has spread to the skeleton. The doc who told him said the prognoses was "good" but a short web-search indicates a lifespan of one or two years and a painful death.

Little S is going to lose her grandpa. My beloved mother-in-law is going to lose her spouse of forty plus years. And of course, Mistress is going to lose her father. And it's not going to be pretty. It's an ugly disease, and he's not a well-balanced man at the best of times. He's prone to rumination and angst, he has a nasty tendency to spread his bad mood around with snarky comments and petty meanness, and he tends to drink to relieve anxiety. He's already lashed out at Mistress a couple of times for things he feels she's done him wrong over the years (mostly a slammed door a couple of years ago - I have no idea what that's about, it's a really strange thing to be hung up about), and my fear is that it'll only get worse.

I wish I could help him. I wish I could help her. I wish I could make it all better.

And I'm dreading the day little S will realise grandpa has cancer and is going to die. She's already crying about cancer and dying (not to mention losing limbs - she's got a lot of existential angst for a three year old), and I so wish I could tell her that we will all live together for ever.

But we wont, and the scary truth is that yes, she could die, her moms could die, everyone around her could die. We most probably wont, but yes, we could. And I really really don't want to have that conversation - or rather, I'd really want a way to comfort her afterwards when she's inconsolable.

We have a shaky Christian faith, both me and Mistress, we choose to get married in a church and to baptise our kid, we both went through with confirmation as teenagers (even though my atheistic dad said that if I only did it for the presents, I could get presents anyway....). We want to believe there's something after death, we want to believe we're not separated forever. But... We're both also scientists. It's hard to believe without proof. It's hard to trust and find comfort in something a part of you say is bullshit.

I do believe in a soul. I do believe in a benevolent, loving God. And I very strongly believe in offering my kid something besides "nah, we're all gonna die and that's that, buck up kid!" when she's torn in pieces by despair and separation anxiety.