Allam looked over. The woman beside him, the woman introduced as Gwen, was trying to erase herself. He knew this instinctively.

“Let me tell you something that has been out of sight in my family,” said Addie, who’d definitely decided to keep the lie about Sybil buried. Sybil was alive in Greenley, but barely, in a single room in palliative care. Rails on her bed to prevent her from falling out; family members taking turns sitting in a chair at her bedside, reading, staring out the window or falling asleep under a borrowed hospital blanket. Taking their cues from Sybil’s level of consciousness. Nurses came in and out of the room. Not sadly or tragically, but not cheerily, either. They did what had to be done. Drugs were administered for pain. Addie had the feeling that all of them, including her, were managing to “support” and “sustain” Sybil. Collectively and with enormous effort, they were holding her frail self together. They reinforced her human dignity, her right to breathe, her right to existence, as long as these rights endured. Who would give the signal to let go? Would it come from one of them, or from Sybil herself? Maybe her friend was ready to die and they were all standing in the way, blocking her exit.

She continued, switching tracks in her mind. “Family funerals, though very much a reality, have become almost invisible in my extended family. In the past, I’d heard rumblings about unresolved disputes among my mom’s relatives. Grudges. I suppose there are disputes of varying proportions in all families.”

“There isn’t a family I know that doesn’t have a few members who don’t speak to one another,” said Hazzley.

“True enough,” Addie said, and continued. “Relatives can make demands. Or feel they’re in a position to criticize. The grudges in my mom’s family started out as personal quarrels among aunts, uncles, in-laws, outlaws, even cousins, nieces, nephews. My late mother had a large number of relatives, many of whom are still alive. Here are some of the tales that were reported: a brother snubbed a sister in a Walmart parking lot; an uncle sent a letter to a brother-in-law that the recipient found insulting; a sister told her brother he smelled like boiled meat; someone offered to help put up storm windows but didn’t show up; another was accused of ‘ugly’ behaviour when he drank too much rum at an anniversary celebration and refused to go home; an aunt flirted with her sister’s husband; there was a misunderstanding about a ring. I didn’t hear the entire range of behaviour. I only know that the sum of all the grudge-holding was magnified out of proportion to the initial disputes. Everyone was getting old, moving along the continuum, and no one knew how to fix things. Now when someone dies, nobody is notified. The immediate family holds a private funeral, and two or three weeks after the burial, an obituary is placed in the local paper. The relatives, including sisters and brothers, are not given the opportunity to attend or participate in mourning rituals. This has happened four times that I know of. Does this help anyone involved? Of course not. It only adds an extra layer to the existing grief.”