misplaced mama

Shzzzt

Shzzzt

Shzzzt.

The bag full of the Chemo was getting small, the fluid level lowering, the plastic tightening, shrink wrapping around it. The liquid dripped and pumped and dumped itself into my mother’s skin through a long clear tube. It entered in through a hole above her left breast to be exact. I imagined it swimming through her system, looking for all the clean places to live, taking over her insides one swoosh at a time like a sea monster, green and fanged.

I walked to over to the bag and squinted at the small writing, the name of the doctor, the name of my mother, the date, the nurse who administers it to her.

What’s in this shit, anyway? Why aren’t there any ingredients listed here?

It’s not a juice box, it’s a bag of chemo.

I think of it like a person, an evil person and I hate it. I hate it, ma.

Silence. I break it.

Okay, lets think of it like this instead. It’s a healing liquid, pure god gold, and it comes from the deepest soul of the cosmos and it heals, it’s pouring into your body like a healing light. And it swims and waves through you and leave behind a trail of love, of beautiful healthy love. Okay?

Sounds good to me. She looks up and smiles and her eyes go back down to her lap.

She flips through Real Simple Magazine. Hhhhmmm, that salad looks good, it has salmon on it. I dunno, even though it looks good it’ll taste like metal if I eat it. Yuck. Nothing tastes good.

I’ll make you something good when we get home. Mango cobbler? Wilted spinach?

We’ll see if I can even eat.  My doctor to said to eat anything, whatever I want, but nothing everthing tastes like crap, my mouth is so dry.  She smacks her lips, her tongue.

I sit down in the chair next to her. My boobs fill with milk. I press them in tight with my hands. Z is at home in good hands, in the arms of my mother’s sister.

I know you don’t want to hear this, but ma, you look real good. I mean considering your age and the chemo you have had, you look good. Your skin glows. I mean besides your hair, which isn’t all that bad, you look good.

Well, looks can be deceiving.

She doesn’t want to hear it. Everyone tells her that. She feels so horrible and so weak and so utterly not herself, she gets annoyed when people tell her she looks good. She want’s them/us to know she does not feel good, that she still needs to be held, that she still needs care.  She wants to be angry and sad and as she says, have a pity party and she’s the only one invited. We all tell her she has every right now, she has every right.  But we also want her to feel strong and the pillar that she, that at least we all want her to still be. 

I know you don’t feel good, ma, I know you don’t. But just know you look beautiful. As ever.

And I mean it. She is breathtaking. Almost 78 years old and she is one of those woman who should model, one of those old wise souls who should be in a book about how you look better with age. Her skin is rosey and clear, wrinkles seem to be erased, her eyes dark and set deep. Her weight loss only happened her belly. Now she is a little sprite of a lady, but with nice full breasts. Her hands, when I look at her hands, I still see strength.

She reaches up to fluff her thinning hair, it’s puffy like angel hair, the roots gray, the ends a familiar color of auburn. She sighs.

I usual spiral down tonight, the second night of the treatment.

Well, maybe you will and maybe you won’t. We’ll see.  We’ll get you home so you can hold that baby and I’ll make you food.  Maybe it will be different this time around.

We’ll see.

***

You know what’s I’d like to do? Talk to your doctor. Maybe I can help him turn this Chemo center into a holistic treatment center. You know, a section for real cancer nutrition, like the real deal and a section for massage and skin treatments, an area for counseling for patients and families. I think I’ll ask him about it. This place needs more, it’s so big yet empty.  It feels sterile.  Did you see the vending machine?  It’s filled with junk food!  There should be a juice bar here!  Not oreos and cheetos.  There should be whole body services.  Maybe I should propose it to him?

Please, don’t. He’s has no bedside manners.

Well he should.

But he doesn’t and I could care less. I just want to get this done with. Only 4 more sessions to go. I just want this to be ALL DONE.

***

You know what you should do when this is all over with? Whatever you want. Everything you never got to do while raising 7 kids, let’s do it now. We’ll take out tons of credit cards and go to where your family is from in Italy. Or anything. Anywhere. You have amazing credit.  We can 50 grand and credit and go wild. What do you want to do?

I always wanted to drive across country. When you were in high school, I thought it would be a nice thing to do with you. You weren’t  interested.

Well I am now! lets drive across country!

Sounds good to me. I also want to spend a week in Seattle, just wandering around. Seattle sounds like a nice place to me right now. 

It is, it’s a beautiful city. That’s an easy one to do, we can do that first.  Then Hawaii? Austria, where your mother was born? Then we can head over to Italy. Then maybe Spain. Oh, Greece, we gotta get you to Greece.

Maybe. I think I will, hon, it sounds great. Let’s just get through this, though, okay? I need to get through this first.  I hope I don’t throw up all day.  She knocks on wood.

Leave it to her to live in the now and leave it to me to want to lean into the future so badly I practically have my nose smashed into the sidewalk.

***

She walks around the house with this box, shhzt, shhzt, shhzt. It pumps more chemo in her body. I try to think of it as that liquid light. But it’s hard. I hate it. I want to throw it out the window. I want to scoop her up in my arms and hold her to my breast and nurse her to health, be all she tried to be to me and more. I want her here forever and that’s just not going to happen, so all I can hope for is for her to have a few more years of health, so she can run wild, be single and free and feel life, for once, for once in her life, to live life for herself. For nobody else.  No bed making or doing my dad’s laundry, no putting up with him and his bad habits, no putting up with needy kids, no dishes to wash or floors to scrub.  The funny thing is, if she was to do it all over again, I think she’d change nothing. She is a mother. That was her life. Is her life. Will always be.