Last summer my sister and mother arranged a family reunion. One earliest arrival was a first cousin of my mother's and her husband, who responded to my greeting with the tale of their daughter's suicide attempt. I have no skill in politely disentangling myself and little ability tactfully to redirect inappropriate conversation. Eventually, after having had poured in the porches of mine ears information about my unknown second cousin's depression, school, distance from her parents, church fellowship, and morbid attempt, I blurted, "I'm sorry, but you're wearing sunglasses so I can't see your eyes and is your daughter alive?" She was. She survived her crisis, and her parents saw fit to honor that survival by exacerbating her trauma by breaching her privacy to whoever, including a perfect stranger who happens to be blood kin in the second degree, months afterward. I was horrified to be the passive partner in this intrusion. After my blurt I said that I was sorry for her troubles and theirs and was profoundly grateful to the next arrival, hostessly obligations toward whom I claimed as excuse to extricate myself from this violation of common decency.
My mother just told me that another child of this gossip is soon to marry and that she (my mother) and another cousin are going to travel together to the ceremony. I refrained from asking if intimate details about this near-tragedy will be printed in the program. The woman might recognize that her own idle chit-chat has ensured that everyone in her reach however unconnected to her daughter already knows everything she has seen fit to divulge, but she might not.