Life is weird as much as it’s strange…
Chantale and I have been talking about kids recently for various reasons and the question came up about kids being born sick. I told her that there is someone in my family who suffers from a form of autism. I wasn’t sure where he falls in the family so I told her we’d talk to my mother about it soon. All I knew was that I met him and his brothers in Italy many years ago.
Last night, we were downstairs talking with my mom and I asked her about him. His name is Francisco (where I used to think it was Frankie) and he’s the oldest boy of my mother’s oldest brother, making him my first cousin. This perplexed me to no end because I know my mom has a younger brother (living in Montreal), an older sister (living in Italy) and an older sister who passed away years ago who used to live in Argentina. I had no recollection of her older brother, my uncle! The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put a face to it. We left and she said she would go through the photo albums to get me a picture.
With all this discussion, this morning, my mom calls her sister in Italy only to find her in tears. Apparently her brother had been found earlier near the main church in the city (it’s a huge church up on the hill – Madonna del Pettoruto) on his way to work. He suffered from some kind of blockage in his lungs and he passed out. They rushed him to a hospital in Cosenza (about 25 minutes away) looking more dead than alive. He’s now in intensive care and we’ll get more news later tonight when my mom calls for an update.
Needless to say, she’s very shook up by this as he’s only 2 years older than her and I’m feeling a little freaked out about the fact that we spoke about him yesterday and then this morning he almost dies…