Another loss in the family

Yesterday evening my Aunt Ardis called with the terrible news that my cousin Tim – my oldest cousin, a year younger than me – had died.

Of course a shock, but not a surprise – Tim had been diagnosed in January with thyroid cancer, and seemingly everything that could go wrong did go wrong. He had surgery at Sloan Kettering in early February and an expected eight to ten day hospitalization ended up at about 25 days. He had breathing problems and was trached, and they never were able to close the tracheotomy.

I saw him over the summer at my uncle’s summer party, and he was terribly thin, and had just found out the cancer was spreading – it was in his lung.

Things got better, got worse, better again and then the decline. When I spoke with his wife Pat last weekend (Tim couldn’t talk), she seemed resigned to a bad outcome. But I didn’t think it would be this fast.

Tim and Pat have three grown children and he has two sisters and two brothers. They and his parents are all crushed. He was a great family man. So spare a prayer for my cousin and his family.

Here he is this summer, with our Tim. My cousin always laughed when I pointed out how close the resemblance was!