"LA SALUD DE LOS ENFERMOS" WITH A LOCAL TWIST

By Juan Montoya
In Julio Cortazar's short story "La Salud de Los Enfermos" a family finds itself unable to tell a sickly mother that her son – and their relative – had died on his way to work in a neighboring country. Not willing to break the news to the woman and perhaps cause her to become sicker and perhaps die, they hide the truth from her.
Cortazar, the master story teller he was, weaves his tale around the deceit to the point where he has the mother writing letters to her son and – unbeknownst to her – read the return letters written by friends of the family in the distant city who had acquiesced to write them to keep her believing he was still alive. At the end, after the mother died of natural causes without seeing her son, the female relative who was helping to conceal his death, is at a a loss on how to answer the letter from the (dead) son asking about his mother's health. How can he write him to tell her she is dead?
It's not often that one comes face to face with a work of literature being played out in real life.
A variation of Cortazar's tale came alive to me just recently when I ran across a friend of mine whose father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors conducted exploratory examinations only to find out that the disease had progressed to the point where it was futile to perform surgery.
When he came out of the anesthesia, the patient asked his family how the surgery went. Unwilling to dash his hopes, they decided to tell him it went fine and that in time they hoped he would get better.
Now, my friend, knowing that will never happen, is standing by helplessly as the entire family makes believe for their patriarch's sake that he is going to recover. There's not much he can say. After all he is the father of his wife and the grandfather of their children.
The man will eventually succumb to the terminal disease. There will be medical costs associated with pain mediation and homeopathic remedios that will maintain his hopes alive that he will get better.
But between now and then he can only stand by be a character of the replay of the variation on Cortazar's short story as it unfolds in real life.