My brother's first marriage to his high school sweetheart resulted in two children. When they were very young, those two children, one still in infancy, the other just a bit older, experienced misfortune as my sister-in-law began to spiral downward into childhood herself, focusing on trivialities, regressing into a facsimile of a child herself. The marriage could not be resuscitated, and my brother began to raise the children on his own. He remained in Halifax, teaching at Dalhousie, and my sister-in-law returned to Toronto where her family remained, but they were unable to do much to help her.

Over the decades to follow, as the children became older they were taken back to Toronto on trips with their father, where his family too was largely situated, and on those trips they would see their mother; by then the relationship was more superficial than real, their mother occasionally forgetting to take her medications and reverting to her delusions.

My brother, insisted that it was no hardship for him to hold down a full-time professorship with all it entailed, and look to the welfare of two growing children, was determined to raise them well. He did have some assistance, giving the children over to the care of a day-time minder, a young woman who operated a day-care and whom he trusted with his children.

As it happened, that relationship with the minder of his children turned into a romance. At first they lived together for years, with George-Ann caring for the children as though they were her own, although she passionately wanted children of her own, but it was not to be; she had to be satisfied with children she cared for as her own. They married thirteen years ago, my brother and my new sister-in-law.

Time does pass; the children are adults, one living in Los Angeles, the other in Vancouver, and my brother and my sister-in-law remain in Halifax. He just had his 65th birthday, simultaneous to being treated for an aggressive stomach cancer which oncologists informed him is inoperable. He's now in his fourth round of chemotherapy.

Tomorrow a scan is scheduled, and on Monday they will meet with the oncologists who will have interpreted the results of the chemotherapy protocol, to determine what progress has been made, if any. My brother's cancer has been entirely without symptoms; he has weathered the chemotherapy far better than most would; he hasn't lost weight, nor his appetite, though he has suffered nausea time and again. His fortitude is immense, his will to live reflecting that state of mind. His is a strong and healthy body were it not for the cancer, and that and his mental state may carry him through.

What else carries him through is the emotional support and loving care given him by his wife. Their wedding anniversary arrives on February 13, and all things being equal, my sister-in-law is planning another little intimate party with close friends to be invited, friends who have stood by them, with a rotating roster of home-cooked meals delivered faithfully every week to give them a little bit of relief from the stress they're under.