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The Tuxedo Archives

Abstract

The date is August 7, 1957. It’s hard to believe that almost six decades have passed, but a look at the calendar, not to mention the event’s subsequent loneliness, make it easy to confirm. A shrink would have a field day with this one! Actually, he did! You see, the date is the day my mother left this world—died, to be blunt. She was a victim of breast cancer. She lasted barely a year after a radical mastectomy was performed that was, only to the surgeon and my father, a sham waste of time performed mainly to make my mother believe that she actually had some hope of survival. Actually, as the surgeon knew the instant his blade divided her flesh, her fate was already sealed, her future irretrievably determined—she had none! I learned soon after the funeral that on the start of the surgery, he knew the vile contagion had already gone beyond the point where anything remedial would have any effect. At that point, he told my father the terrible news and, in turn, promised that my mother would be kept blissfully ignorant of what lay in store for her. If she ever found out, the intelligence would not come from Dr. Dice ‘n Slice.

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