I hope you’ll forgive the maudlin tone of this column, but we have had a few family "crises" in our household of late, none of them exactly life-threatening to us, but stressful nevertheless.

The first is something that began a year ago when my wife's sister was diagnosed with cancer.
These days, it seems you are an oddity if cancer has not affected your family in some way. Well, there's obviously nothing odd about us.

Cancer has made its insidious presence known to us a number of times in recent years, starting when one of Carol's sisters successfully beat back stomach cancer more than five years ago.

Next, came devastating news when her brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago. He left us only four months later at the age of 49.

Now, the family deals daily with the struggle of another sister who is attacking her lung cancer head-on and we all pray for the best.

Another "crisis" arose when Carol was diagnosed with lupus a few weeks ago. The disease that is known to have a thousand faces because of the difficulty in diagnosing its numerous symptoms has caused us more than a few sleepless nights of late. (By the way, the Barrie lupus group has a picnic planned for this Saturday at 11 a.m. at Centennial Beach. If you pass by, show your support.)

And in the midst of all the recent predicaments, we came to the conclusion it was time to bring Carol's mother into our home.

My mother-in-law Olive had been living at Collier Place, a terrific high-rise across from City Hall that is full of mainly seniors living independently in tidy apartments. But being 85, Olive found that daily routines were becoming more difficult.

For us, the solution was simple … move her into our home.

For Olive, it felt not so simple. She did not want to lose her independence and pointed out that she felt like she would be invading our privacy by moving in here. I agreed, but had to point out that we would be invading her privacy as well and we would simply have to adjust.

Fortunately, in the past month, we have done just that.

I should point out that Olive is not the stereotypical mother-in-law. She and I get along just fine. She has a wonderful sense of humour and best of all, she tolerates my cooking, which is quite a compliment to my kitchen skills considering the fact she is the best cook I ever met. And living with two women has forever cured me of leaving the toilet seat up.

I made the mistake of telling Carol that our accumulated calamities meant little to me. "Bring it on!" I declared one recent morning on the way to work. "There's nothing I can't handle."

That was the day before I learned I was being retired. After 40 years in journalism, 11 of them here in Barrie, it is time to go. I’ll admit my ego took a bit of a wallop in that meeting.

There is a folksy truism that bad news comes in threes, so I thought, for a brief moment, that when life-altering events come in fours (cancer, lupus, mother-in-law, retirement) that I must have done something unforgivable to offend the Supreme Being.

However, despite being frequently full of cynicism, I also have a goodly supply of optimism. Weird mixture, I know, but true.

I can't cure my sister-in-law's cancer, but the family and I can help boost the quality of her life. I can't cure Carol's lupus, but I can support her and help guide her through the medical maze to allow her to live a "normal" life. I can't give Olive a Fountain of Youth that will turn back the clock, but I can make a meaningful contribution that I hope will provide her with more smiles than frowns.

And I can't hold on to my current job past June 30, but I can turn what's left of a career into something meaningful for me and perhaps for a younger generation that might still have something to learn from a cranky old editor.

The thing that bothers me is the realization that when you're retired, you never get a day off or a statutory holiday. That just doesn't seem fair.