Bad news and a hard decision

eafogel

This morning I got the news that my "aunt" is dying. She's a close friend of my mom's that we grew up calling Aunt L.  She would come over on weekends when we were small and stay up late with my parents playing spades.  We would sneak into the room and she would pull us on her lap and feed us peanut M&Ms. As we became adults, we got to where we'd only see her a few times a year.

She's always been a chain smoker and it had made her ill.  She coughed a lot, and eventually she had to be on oxygen.  We thought she had emphysema, which is bad enough.  Turns out she'd been keeping secret the fact that she has lung cancer.  The call I got was my mom telling me that she had tried to call Aunt L, but Aunt L's daughter answered.  She told mom that Aunt L has the last stages of lung cancer and the doctors have allowed her to go home on hospice care because they can't do anything else.  They told her she has a matter of days and advised family and friends to say goodbye.  My mom is devastated, and I feel like I'm losing a piece of my family.

My mom wants to go over there tonight and DH stay with my dad to watch my nephew and Emily.  I would drive mom over to Aunt L's. 

So now I have to make a decision.  As I mentioned, Aunt L has always been a smoker.  I'm not sure if she's smoking now, but it has permeated her entire house.  DH and I made the decision when LO was born that we would not expose her to second-hand smoke.  Because of this, she has never been to my ILs house (DH's father smokes).  But Aunt L has never met Emily, and now she never will unless I break our rule.  A big part of me wants to take LO with me tonight to meet her, but the other part feels like I need to protect the health of my child. I'm not sure what the right decision would be. 

I feel so torn.  Maybe we should just go and say our goodbyes without the distraction of LO.  Or maybe Aunt L would welcome the distraction??   I just don't know.

If you made it through this whole thing, you're amazing.