misplaced mama

Getting old is hell.  That’s what my father used to say. Now I know what he meant.

Oh ma.  Old is a state of mind.  So is hell.

My heart closes with these words stinging it.  They are just words but I inflate them with defeat, death, fear.

Silence falls within the wireless pathways that connect us from one corner of the country to the other.  I change the subject, perk up my voice, heart attempting to open back up.

So.  Now that it’s all done.  How is it different, how are you different?  What’s changed?

Hhmm.  I don’t…know. Let’s see.  She thinks. You know how I used say ‘don’t sweat the small stuff?’

Yup.  All the time.

Now I say, don’t sweat the big stuff either.  It’s all stuff.  Nothing is worth sweating over.  

She is completely full of it. Fluorouracil, Calcium Leucovorin, Folic Acid, Oxaliplatin.  This specific cocktail of Cancer Destroying drugs swoosh throughout her body fluids and kill everything in it’s path that might be an invader.  As it searches for cancer, it knocks her whole system down so low, she loses all strength to grip the ground and get back up.  She has been on the underside for the past three months, it consumes her, there is nothing else besides her cozy chair, a few sips of water a day, a bit of soup, maybe a scrambled egg, her favorite shirt: I‘m On Chemo, What’s Your Excuse?, her book of meditations and her dry skin salve.  She has just completed her twelfth session of chemo.  The little box that was zipped inside a fanny pack and sat on her lap is gone.  No more will it infuse her body with the liquid army via a port, that was inserted under skin, just above her collar bone.  Her doctor said twelve was the magic number and she made it there.  Yet her body is now a vessel holding it within, it still lives in her, she is filled up to the brim with it. 

Nothing worth sweating ma, except all that chemo inside you.  Sweat that all out, okay?  We need to get you weekly massages and into a sauna.  A sweat lodge!  That’s what you need!

I can feel her smile 2500 miles away.  Oh please! Love you.  Gonna go rest, hopefully tomorrow I will feel better.

***

How are you today?

Uh, I think I pushed myself a bit.  Cleaned down under the sink and changed all the sheets.  I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I can’t wait to clean my house again, MY way.

Everybody that has helped my mother out in this journey,  cooking and cleaning, has undoubtedly not lived up to her standards.  She is grateful, that is obvious.  Impressed?  Not one bit.  My mother is holds the torch and nobody can wipe a surface clean or vacuum a floor or dust wood furniture like she could. 

You gotta take it easy.  Just let your body rest. So ma. You’re all done.  Doesn’t it feel good?

I am fishing for anything positive.  I can hear her voice holding her pain, her exhaustion.  I can hear her voice holding the sickness.  She owns it now, it’s her card to play.  I can’t force her to get over it, force her to forget the pain she has been in or the pain that still lingers.

I still have the PET Scan and the colonoscopy to go through.  I am not looking forward to those, but they’ll tell us if anything is left.  There is no way I can go through another six months of this.  

My heart closes again.  I want celebration!  Cartwheels!  I want chants and cheers from her:  D-O-N-E!!!! A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!  I’m awesome!  I’m done with this shit!  I’m cancer free!

Six months?  NO way! Ma, you’re good.  I know you are.  Of course you are going to feel shitty for a while, you’re filled with the chemo, but it’s just the chemo that feels bad, not YOU, not you, ma.  You’re good.  Your good, I promise.  The cancer is gone, I know it is.

And yet her body tells it’s truth.  She is exhausted.  Eight months of poison. Her 78 year old body endured [and survived] fevers and infections because of it, in and out of hospitals and on and off antibiotics.  She lost half her head of hair [luckily she stared out with a mane of a Lioness and never once had to put on her custom-made wig she named Stella].  She has lost over 20 pounds, 10 of those she ‘could’ loose, the other ten has chiseled her body into that of a thin twelve year old boy with full breasts.  Gloves have been needed to open and close the ‘fridge or when touching anything colder than room temperature from neuropathy.  She has a hole in her flesh where the tube drained into her, a scar across her belly, horizontal and vertical, where the knifes cut through her to reach and remove the mass of disease that formed inside her.

It’s just that I have faith, I do.  I have the same faith that she shared with me my whole life. There is no name to it, no verse nor god.  It’s just Faith. I found it when my life landed on the same ground as hers.  Sometimes I think that’s why I picked her, her undying faith in Love.  And now, I see little remnant of it.  How can I not have it now?  She is my mama.  I want my kids to have memories of her.  Damn her, now more than ever she needs its, I need it from her.

My heart closes in these moments when I talk to her.  It shuts down to hardened pit; uncomfortable and hot.  A door gets slammed and my shoulders hunch forward.  I get annoyed.  I want to tell her to get over it, get over the fact that she is sick and she might just get better.  Her illness has been a vehicle for being heard.  Her whole life, she was the listener.  These past 8 months, since she has been diagnosed with cancer of the Ileum, had the surgery to remove the tumor and endured the chemotherapy, she  has finally been heard, been taken care of . For the first time ever, she was the center of concerned.  It was always her being consumed by all of us.  Now that it is all done, I wonder if she fears the roles will be reversed, and we expect her in some why to give the way she always has. 

I see my mother holding the weakness tighter that holding potential strength.  My hearts shuts down not because I judge her journey.  My heart shuts down because I am petrified to lose her.  My heart closes  because I know I will, eventually.  She will die. Not now, but someday.  There is a part of me that longs to hear her say, I’m back, baby, mama’s here, mama’s for you.  Come on up in my lap and let me rock you.  But it’s not for her to say anymore.  It’s my job now.  I say that to my own kids, and in a different language, I must now say it to her now, my mother.  Role reversal.  Something I am not sure I am ready for yet.  There is that book Mothering the Mother, the one about holding a new mother while birthing.  But how do you Mother your Mother, pre-death?

In eight months my mother went from hopping on planes, visiting her kids all over the country, helping me out with my babies and toddlers and moving to being old.  And sick.  And vulnerable.

So when you come out here, I want you to stay at least three weeks.  That way we can get down to Seattle for a few and have time to explore some Islands.

We’ll see.  We’ll see how I feel.  I still have a couple months to wait this out, hopefully I will get better.

Heart: Closes.  You are better.  The chemo needs to leave your system.  When that happens you’ll be shock at how amazing you feel. You won’t always feel this way.  I cling to this thought.  Maybe it’s not fair.  Maybe she needs me to say how much it all sucks still.  And I have, I’ve done it.  And now I am over it, I am over my mother being sick.  I want her to be over it, too. And silently in my heart I know I have to remain unattached to her, her life.  She may not be here next week, next month.  Maybe I’ll get her for a full five more years, maybe even ten.  She comes from a family with multiples that live to almost 100.  Perhaps she will even outlive me.  Living and dying are unpredictable.  But for this moment, I need to feel like she is well.  It is my vision for and I won’t let that go until somebody, some test,  tells me differently.  

When I was little and I used to pray at night.  I’d pull the covers over my head and clasp my hands together and I’d  beg god, mary, jesus, saint jude, all the angels, that my parents would stay alive until I was at least thirty which at the time seemed really old, assuming by then I’d have done all I needed to do.   I thought this was a lot to ask, not sure if they could ever make it to seventy.  I had understanding very early on that they were older than the parents of my peers.  They had me late in life.  They could have been my grandparents.  So the fact that I have had my mother this long,that she walked me down the aisle at my wedding, she sat outside my first daughters birth and heard me scream as I pushed her out, that she held my babies when they were moments old, gave them their first baths,  first real haircuts, bought them their bought them their first pair of underwear,  I guess all that makes me really lucky.  And blessed.  And for now I wait and live with that.