Unfiltered Story #129973

(When I am very little, I live for a time with my grandparents. We have a neighbor in the building, my grandparents’ age, who I learn has recently become a widower. )

Me: “Grandma, what happened to Mr. [Neighbor]’s wife?”

Grandma: “Well, hmm, you see, [My Name], it was discovered she had a tumor; it was in her arm/hand. And the doctors told her it had to be amputated or she’d probably die. But she just really didn’t want to have her arm amputated and refused to do it. So unfortunately she ended up becoming very sick and passing away from it.”

Me: “Oh”

(For decades afterwards, I kept on believing in the back of my mind that this is a type of disease that commonly happens. I’ve only recently remembered this conversation again, and now that I think on it, it doesn’t seem all that likely that grandma was really telling the full truth to little four-or-five-year-old me. I’ve never in my life heard of this kind of tumor – one that’s specifically in one hand/arm, besides in comic books. Methinks grandma may have been censoring things a bit about what the neighbor’s wife really died of.)