Communications

What a father says to a child; what a child says back. What they each hear.

At age 11, Garry (not Gary) Troudeau's father handed him a medical text to explain that the son would soon be losing the father to amyloidosis. Perhaps related, Garry chose not to be a fifth generation Troudeau physician. Instead,there is the Doonesbury comic strip, where father and sons and daughters talk, but the point is whether or not the reader listens.

** Admittedly, the father was wrong, but how do you tell your child you are dying? **