The title of this series comes from a line in T.S. Eliot s The Waste Land : April is the cruelest month. It s certainly the cruelest month for me.
I don t understand how so many tragedies managed to gather so close together within the span of 31 days. I do know from talking to other people that sometimes it happens this way, and there s no useful explanation for it. It s just one of those things.
On April 2 of this year, I lost my mother, Bettye Seitz, with who I had a long and contentious relationship. On April 27 of last year, I lost my second wife, Nancy, to metastatic breast cancer. That s the same day I lost my first wife, Nancy s younger sister Jennifer, to an undiagnosed heart ailment, fifteen years earlier, on April 27, 2006. Nancy and Jennifer s times of death were minutes apart.