Does a sibling have a right to know if his brother is alive or dead?
I have heard nothing from my brother or his wife since May, for three months. At that time he was receiving chemotherapy for cancer, after radiation and then massive surgery had failed.
Does a sister-in-law have the right to withhold such information from her huband’s brother?
I think the answer depends on what moral universe you live in.
If a person acknowledges no higher power, no god or siritual force in the universe, then what is to prevent her from withholding information on my brother’s medical commission, or indeed blocking communications between us?
In a person who acknowledges no higher moral values, the answer may be a whim, or an imagined injury she never revealed to you or gave you a chance to examine whether you were morally to blame, or not.
In such a moral universe, there are no restraints. Judgments fueled by imagination and alcohol and who knows what emotions may be allowed to grow, like some dark fruit, while the accused is not advised of the crimes with which he is charged, has no right to discuss the “evidence” if any, and in any event has already been convicted before any charges were brought.
If you live in a moral universe with values according to which such actions are shockingly wrong and immoral, but are dealing with a sister-in-law who lives in a different kind of moral universe, what would you do?
What coukd you do?
Do you have the right to know when your brother dies, or even the right to attend his funeral?
What right?
What would or could you do?
Signed:
An abused sibling