I am trying very hard to practice loving kindness toward my younger sister’s husband, but his frequent pettiness makes it very, very hard.

He and my sister have become health reporters -- they cannot talk to you about how they’re feeling or what’s happening without mentioning fact after fact after medical fact. I get that this is their coping mechanism, the way they deal with the spectre of my sister’s death. When they focus on the minutiae of her health care and treatment, it makes them feel like they have some measure of understanding or control over her situation.

But the truth is, they don’t. They have no control whatsoever. Her cancer is terminal and the chemo is doing more harm to her immune system than good to the tumors that continue their inexorable invasion of her brain.

Every time I talk to her on the phone, she asks me to speak more slowly. I can’t tell if it’s because her brain is computing worse than the time before, or if in my haste to get as much communication in as possible, I’m speaking too quickly. It doesn’t matter. I ask about how she’s feeling, and she recounts her bowel movements, her bloodwork schedule, and tells me about her chemo medication. I try to keep it light, but most of the time let her guide the conversation. She always asks about how cold it is in New York, and whenever I tell her, she exclaims something like, “Wow! That’s two degrees above freezing!” Today I forget to tell her that it snowed a little bit. That would have excited her.

There’s no easy way here, is there?