The day Roscivs got diagnosed with cancer I asked him
who should I tell or not tell? (Note: I had already told my sister Rita, in shock and need.)
He didn't have any wishlist of persons to tell. I could tell anyone
I wanted, he said, as long as it was clear they were not to contact him — ask him how he is, solicit information — call him for details — insist on "processing" it with him — &c.
I wanted very much to talk about it for a little while.
I chose to tell his mother. She was not the second person to know, or the fifth, but she was one of the soonest. I later wished sometimes that I had not told her for as long as that was feasible.
I don't know how long that could have been.
It was perhaps more his father that was the problem even up front (certainly later). It's hard to tell. They are, after all, a unit. His father began pestering Roscivs to "call your mother", telling him "she needs to hear from you" and "she's worried" and other such things.
I was — absolutely — clear that it was R's request that he not be contacted. That he be contacted and pressured to contact someone else seemed ... foul.
His dad didn't respond to the initial boundary.
When I reminded him, he kept at it.
When he kept at it, I sent him a diamond-clear restatement:
this is Roscivs' wish. I expect you to respect it. He basically said
I don't care what he wants. This is what I want. (To be fair, and to complicate matters, another reasonable interpretation of what said is
what you say doesn't matter, we were his family first.)
Things between us went downhill from there.
Maybe he thought I was making shit up. (If he did, he had chances to clear this up in person: we invited them for a visit and he could have asked Civs "is your crazy wife making things up?")
Maybe he was trying to figure out how to comfort himself.
Maybe R's mother was so wildly distressed his dad was willing to try anything to make her feel better — even at the expense of his son.
I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it why the hell he was doing what he was doing. I had this belief that perfect understanding yielded perfect love.
After Roscivs died, I came across
The Ring Theory of Kvetching. The basic rule is comfort in, dump out. A lot if not all of my problems with his parents came from violations of the Ring Theory of Kvetching. As I saw it, they were dumping in. Of course it was (and is) awful for them. I get that. But they dumped in.
Not okay.
There was another problem. Though I wouldn't have used Kvetching Ring language at the time — I didn't have it yet — they behaved in ways that communicated to me that they thought they're closer in to the center of the circle (Roscivs) than I. That made me a whole other dimension of upset.
When something horrible happens, when things go terribly awry, I like to think that at I least learn how to make them better next time.
Unfortunately, I don't feel I have gained constructive insight here. At least now I have a kvetchy hyperlink.
