A family member has been given 1.5 years to live, brain cancer. I know this person quite well.

Honestly, I’ve never forgiven this person for standing by and watching things happen when I was a child.
I’ve asked myself if it was possible they didn’t know. I suppose in the same manner that Jews asked themselves and each other how it was possible that their neighbors didn’t know what the Nazis were doing.
I know though, that it is possible that they didn’t know. People can refuse to know, refuse to even see, what’s happening right in front of them. They really don’t know. Even if it’s by subconscious choice.

There are two questions in my mind right now.
1. Why do I hold that refusal to see so many years ago against them, even now.
2. Why do I feel that because they didn’t act then, that they don’t need my concern and well wishes now.

The second question is easier to answer than the first. I don’t love this person. I don’t think I ever did. I didn’t know them when I first met them (obviously) and from that time on they ignored all that happened to me.
I don’t feel terribly upset about the cancer because I don’t love, never felt I even knew, this person. I have no time or effort invested into this person.

But I know that this news will hurt two people I DO care about greatly. And will hurt even more one person I used to care about intensely as a child, though we’ve grown apart as we went our own ways as adults.
Do I feign concern and regret for their sakes?

Then, there is the third question.
3. Why do I feel guilty about not caring.

Enough for now.. I have no answers.