What's up?

Oh, I know my posts are getting sparse these days. The truth is I am struggling lately. I don't know if you remember about 6 months ago we lost a dear friend to cancer. It was shocking and horrible and he was way too young to die. It's still hard to get my head around that one and we miss him so much.
One of our closest friends has recently started palliative care at home, she's so very sick and it's impossible to accept. Monday is the day I go and spend with her. We talk and I clean and tidy and sometimes cook and we visit and catch up and gossip and sometimes we cry. I love these days and I feel like it's a special gift, being able to spend time with her, I am so grateful.
It's when I don't see her that the anxiety and the deep sadness starts and it's getting harder and harder to surmount. There's not much else to say except, 2008 has not been a great year. It's all been pretty tough, marriages ended and lives ended and some things felt harder than they needed to be. I am an optimistic person and I'm good at looking on the bright side most of the time but I'm still waiting to see the bright side here. She's my friend and she's a wife and she's a daughter and she's a mother and it doesn't matter how many times I say it's not fair it keeps getting worse.
Sorry for the sad post.

What can I say?

Feeling tired and low tonight. I have friends and they have problems and although I care so very much, I just don't know what to say anymore. I want my friends to be happy, I really do but some of the behaviours that are occurring are frankly, alarming.

I am always the voice of reason and the comfort on the other end of the phone. I do it because I care and because I seem to be able to comfort people but sometimes I just don't know if it's a good idea.

Sometimes it backfires.

When my younger brother's marriage was breaking up he called me to tell me what was going on. I was desperately trying to understand what he was telling me and asked a lot of questions. I was pretty shocked by what I heard, I had no idea there were problems so I had a lot to digest. I also spoke to his wife around this time, we have always had a good relationship and I really wanted to understand better. My brother took this as a betrayal and judgment and apart from a visit at our parents where nothing was acknowledged and a poisonous email from him to me and one back from me to him, he has not spoken to me since. It's been months. I haven't seen my niece and nephew since then or spoken to my sister-in-law. I don't feel comfortable visiting the town they live in and my heart is broken. I have tried to contact him but he will not call me back. I refuse to carry on any more email correspondence because I feel like it's a bad way to communicate strong feelings. Too easy to misunderstand and once you push send you can't take it back.

I wasn't going to bring it up here but it's always on my mind and I feel like, with all this talk about my life and all the great stuff that is going on there is still a part that is broken.

Just like everybody else.

I have no soothing advice for myself.