It all began rather innocuously for Gary Temoyan.
But Temoyan doesn't need his mother to fetch us a beer.
Temoyan's voice trails off and he is silent for several moments.
The key was to have them engage us," Temoyan tells me the next morning.
Temoyan thought about a couple of colleagues who would battled the Big
C. They were back on the job.
Joey microwaved popcorn, Tyler put in a DVD, and the three Temoyan men settled in on the couch.
And when Lower Merion, at the rump end of the Philadelphia city
line, finally called, there was pride in the Temoyan family.
They know Daddy's sick," Temoyan says,"that he has a disease that affects his arms and legs,
that something's happening to Daddy's body.".
Joan and her husband, Armand Temoyan, a former Philadelphia rug merchant,
have only this week moved back north from their Florida retirement home to live with Gary and the boys.
Joan Temoyan, in fact, had previously voiced her dismay
to me that Gary had not yet sat down with his sons to explain what was truly happening to him- that he is dying.
Months after his mother again expressed to me her
sadness that Gary had not yet spoken to the boys about his future- Temoyan, his ex-wife Layne,
and their sons gathered in the living room of his home.