Well...

Body language. The parental units lean back, they suddenly look 90 and exhausted. I see the redness in the eyes. There are no hints of smiles, no upturned corners of mouths. Straight lines set in stone. I am pulled into the fear they exude - it engulfs my body.
“We have a diagnosis.”
Silence. The clock was ticking louder than I ever thought possible.
“It’s Multiple Sclerosis.”
I had been hit across the gut with a brick load of numb. The words spread through my veins like a poison, but I couldn’t feel a thing. I could see us all in the living room from above; I could see the shell of me slumped back. But then the talking started. I could only seem to hear a few of the words being said, but I got the picture all the same.
“No cure…. Life long…. Not sure…”
All the sudden I was back from Mars, and I needed to throw up. I became keenly aware of everything. I saw the stitching on the chairs, the stain on my shorts, the pattern left on the carpet by the vacuum cleaner. I saw things so important that I could not bring myself to make eye contact with anyone. I realized that 3 pairs of eyes have settled upon me. I felt tears on my cheeks; falling down slowly, as if they were watching me too. I raised my head to meet the stares. There are tears everywhere; we must have hit the mother lode.
I had nothing to say. There were no possible words that I could have conjured up, nothing that would have made any sense. So they talked to fill up the silence. They talked because silence means entertaining possibilities of the future in your head. Therefore, silence was not an option, because those possibilities were not welcome. I heard words about a change in majors; she will need good health benefits later in life. I heard things about treatment options and lab work, but I didn’t hear what I really longed to hear. All I wanted was four words out of the thousands: “Everything will be ok.”
I wondered how long we would have to avoid silence. I thought to myself that it was the longest conversation we had ever had without someone making a sarcastic comment. Our collective humor had finally failed us. Not only did it fail us, it failed with such finality, came so short, that we all realized our favorite cover up had been rendered completely useless by life. Sorry Mary Poppins, but I've decided laughter is not always the best medicine, and I don’t think a spoonful of sugar would have made it any easier to swallow.