Hi All
Thanks so much for the additional comments on my thread. I'll provide a quick update. My sister is still with us, but the pain has gotten very rapidly worse and she has been in and out of hospital. Her cancer in untreatable, with the exception of managing the pain and it isn't easy to watch and be powerless. I am grateful that I went to Canada when I did and had an opportunity to spend some time with her while she was very much present. That time didn't assuage either my guilt or my anxiety, but we both said a few things that needed to be said. Families are enormously complicated and emotional, it is impossible not to have history, and I can say I've done my part to try and clear up what I can.
Now my wife and children are in Canada on an extended holiday. My wife has been enormously involved and supportive to both my parents and to my sister. While I am not directly providing support aside from a few kind words, I am very relieved to have someone there who gives me regular updates and is fully competent to support my sister's family and mine.
I've always been a lucky man. I am involved in a 12 step support group for an unrelated issue. Once I doubled up on my activity with that group, which requires I be of service to others, I have had my anxiety largely go away. Now I just feel sad, and that I can live with.
Dear Gailsing and Alabama Nancy. Thanks for contributing to this thread. Gail I think I understand how you feel and the depression. When you watch a sibling die, you have to face not only the grief but also your own mortality. I'm a 46 year old man in good health, I still feel inside like I did at 20. It's quite overpowering to have the facts of life brought home so clearly. On top of that, to also watch someone you love suffer and not to be able to do anything is depressing. The release from my feelings has come from focusing on the things I can fix and the people I can help.
Alabama Nancy. I can't imagine having to watch my sister get progressively worse from a slow moving terminal illness. My sister was hospitalized for much of last week and both in extreme pain and confused. My wife had organized a schedule where she and a few other family members would spend shifts in the room so my sister would never be alone. It was all that she could do. As I speak to my wife on a daily basis, I was party to my wife's feelings as she sat in that hospital room late at night. It brought home to me the depth of suffering of everyone involved, but most particularly of the pain my sister had to face. On the one hand you want to see her go quickly so that she stops suffering, on the other, you want to keep her here with us. It is a no win situation, either course leads to misery. One of the things that my sister said when I was at home, was that she was grateful to be the one with a terminal illness. She didn't want to have to watch anyone in her family die, and all she had to do was die with dignity. She has granted us the right to be sad, and the right to move on after. I hope I can live up to the example she is setting.
Thanks again for the support.
Best wishes to all.
Andrew