They don't tell you that you'll come home after the first visit to the Cancer Treatment Center and your plants will be dead. Not the "I forgot to water it" dead. But DEAD.
That the first thing you think upon entering the house and depositing your bag is, "Shit. Everything around me is dying."
Or that weeks later you'll be listening to your boyfriend and friends playing bluegrass and you'll think of your mom. Asleep in her bed with that ridiculously hilarious sleep mask on.
How is she losing weight when she's eating 8 times a day? Did you know there's a name for "wasting away"? It's cachexia.
I hate the phrase wasting away. As if someone isn't doing something to try and help. My brothers and sister in law and I are keeping sharp tabs on her medical notes and feeding her healthy, high calorie protein rich food. But it just falls right off. Maybe we're just trying to WILL her body to start acting eight.
How is it possible to put into words the love you have for this woman who has both driven you crazy, taught you everything that has literally kept you alive and is your example for both what to be and what not to be?
I constantly read and I constantly write. I've never stopped. I cannot find the words to give her before she goes.
We have discussed her death. Her miraculous healing. Situations we may run across in both instances. We have discussed family and friends and I have learned about Andy (I'm not telling her stories) and about the hatchet. I learned about the Mexican wedding pile she of men that through themselves on top of the tee tiny responding officer who fought her way out of it to start cuffing assailants.
I learned she is an extremely shy woman that has trouble speaking in front of a crowd. This tiny bigger-than-life woman who captures every moment of my life with something she has taught me. She prepared me for the real world by teaching me how to care for myself and protect myself. She's taught me about mistakes she has already made that she doesn't want me making. I want her to experience life even more than she already has.
They don't tell you that when her rib cage and vertebrae show up you'll start to get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach because YOU KNOW.
They don't tell you that your Mom is watching you and she knows too. She's watching your son. When you notice that she's watching you and him you'll know what she is thinking.
When that happens, your gaze will land on your child. If you're BRCA positive, like us, you'll possibly think about the preventive surgeries you've had and how you've always felt that cancer hanging just above your neck. And you will wonder; will this be me in twenty years? Will my son be sitting in my place?
Dear God I hope not.
~k~
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