She said her doctor had told her that this could be the possible outcome if they opened her up and saw that she had more than one cyst.

Call it witchly intuition, womanly intuition or just a strong scent picked up by my bullshitometer, but I had the immediate and very strong impression that this was the goal, not a situation created by sudden necessity. When I confronted my dad about this he confirmed it, and then told me she hadn't informed him of it either. The screen on my bullshitometer sounded off, the numbers all rolled up to nine and the screen suddenly registered a huge crack.

Apparently she was concerned my grandmother would find out and worry herself to death or worse, drive my mom crazy with constant worry and nagging. Like I'd say anything. I understand the situation between my mom and grandmother, she's only been telling me about it for ages. It's nice to be trusted.

The most important thing is that mom's okay and she won't have to deal with her pain and girly trouble any more.

But I'd much rather she at least shared a little of the burden with me. She did the same thing that she always complained about Rosa doing, by keeping me out of the loop and taking the emotional weight of what she was going through entirely upon herself. When Rosa died we had barely begun to register the shock of her having AIDS because we had known only a very short time. We suspected, but none of us knew for sure and the whole time she was suffering and getting sick she kept the secret. 15 years.

And now my mother is doing the same thing.

I'm much more hurt that she didn't trust me than if she had gone ahead and 'burdened' me (her feelings about it, not mine) with the truth about her surgery.