The Haunted Spectator

If you cast your mind back let's say thirty years
you were sad when the black family who were 
the first to welcome you, a family of Jews to the 
neighbourhood decided to move to the U.S. for 
improved business opportunities and then you met 
the young couple who bought their house, he tall 
and burly she slight and pretty. They had met in 
Egypt and she sponsored him to move to Canada. 
How surprising to see her heavily pregnant on a 
ladder winding coloured lights around their pine 
for Christmas. Over the years you watched their 
two boys grow in that family seldom seen about
whose mother did all the yardwork and  father 
lived for electronics and soccer. Remote and 
withdrawn yours the sole family that seemed to 
recognize their quiet presence. She viewed your 
husband as a father figure and spoke to him as one. 
Their  youngest lives now in the States at university 
on a soccer scholarship the older one involved in 
business management long left the family home. 
Now you face a dilemma of compassionate empathy
feel haunted by her calm narration to your husband
of her husband's recent diagnosis of a rare cancer 
that has metastasized to his spine. Their only hope
that in coming weeks an unproven new therapy 
in clinical experimentation may represent a fading
hope for his miraculous recovery and survival.