Quite a few years ago my niece Stephanie called me up to yell at me because I had said something about her to her mother, my sister (it wasn’t a tattletale thing, it was more of a bitchy thing).

My answer to her was that since I was talking about her behind her back I didn’t expect her to hear it.

Since this sounded perfectly reasonable to her she just said “Oh, then that’s ok” and went back to our previous conversation.

Well that’s come to bite me in the ass. I immediately got an answer to the email I sent dave forwarding the email that was sent to me and calling him names.

Here’s what he said.

“Now wait just a minute. I did not expect for that schmuck or anybody else to tell you about that letter. And I certainly didn’t want to and don’t want to humiliate you any more than I already have.”

What’s good for Stephanie is good for me.

My sister says he’s probably feeling somewhat isolated in a strange country and  even though he’s happy he wants to make contact with familiar people to tell them how he’s doing.

The strangeness of dave is his choice of how to do it. A group letter? 
For 45 years I was his best friend. He clearly can’t talk to me about it but he has a sister and a close friend, Carmon. He should be having a dialogue with them. (here I am trying to run his life again).

They may not approve of what he’s doing but they both love him and would give him comfort.

Now about the woman who told me about the letter.

I don’t know what her motives were. I’m sure she would have some altruistic reason for telling me this but in my mind it was unkind and a wish to let me know that she had some inside info that she would gladly share over lunch.

This blog has become a life’s blood to me. When something happen, good or bad, I do 2 things. I call my sister and I write my blog.

Every once in awhile I get comments.

Yesterday someone wrote:

I immediately felt better. That’s a side of the blog that I never considered. When I’m in pain, my family is in pain. I couldn’t function without my sister to talk to but sometimes a stranger can say just the right thing.