[This article written by David Frum published in the National Post recently caught my eye since both he and his sister, Senator Linda Frum were in Winnipeg this past spring and I happen to be in the midst of reading Linda's book "Barbara Frum, A daughter's Memoir" which is hard to put down. It is a compelling, great read. If I didn't have to publish weekly I would have completed the book long ago...]
THE SENATOR AND I
by David Frum, October 22,
Away at camp in the summer of 1976, I received an unusual flurry of postcards from my mother.
“Unusual” because my mother did not like to write by hand: Her right arm had been injured in early childhood, forcing her, unnaturally, to use her left for manual tasks.
The time is coming (she wrote) when you and Linda will be forced to rely much more upon each other.
It would be another year before I was told that my mother had been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill her. Yet even in advance of the formal revelation, my sister and I lived in a house unusually conscious of mortality. My mother would live with cancer from 1974 until 1992, 18 years. But she was not given 18 years to live. She was given two years to live, nine times.