UPDATE: Saying goodbye to my mother
Thu May 11, 2006 at 08:36:04 AM PDT
This week I was told that my mother is dying. She's been dealing with cancer for the past couple of years, so I guess it shouldn't come as the shock that it is. The last time I saw her was in February (she lives on the west coast, I live in the midwest), and she was doing great. The chemo had worked, she looked healthy, had energy, and felt like it was a new beginning...she has been planning to move out here to be close to me and her granddaughter since last fall. In the past 3 months, her body has been turning against her, and her cancer is now inoperable and terminal.
As grown-up children, it is the natural order of things that at some point we watch our parents die. At least that's what we hope happens, as no parent wants to outlive their child. My mom always said "I'm going to live to be 100, then I'll die" in a matter-of-fact way, and believed her. We'd joke about it, because she said I could take care of her when she was old (I'm an only child, she is still unmarried) -- "But mom," I'd counter, "If you live to be 100, how will I take care of you? I'll be 81! My kids will have to wheel both of us around!" The joke was always played out with that punch line.
My mom is 49. She probably won't live long enough to turn 50. I wish I could say she's had a full life, done everything she wanted and is content with leaving this world. But I know there are scores of things she expected to do as she got older -- experience financial security, world travel, that one great romance, watching her grandchildren grow up. That's a hard thing for me to make peace with. And I'm at that age where I'm trying to sort through the "stuff" that I went through growing up, trying to examine each hurt so that I can raise my own daughter without repeating generations of damage. It has been a difficult balance -- trying to get past the anger of a messy childhood and trying to be supportive and loving to my mom while she's been battling cancer. All my life I've been trying to separate from her. We look too much alike, sound and express ourselves the same. It's been my life's work to be as unlike her as possible, because I hated being treated like sisters, her leaning on me as her best friend. I can't help but think that it's God's way of having her live on...I'll see her in my face, hear her when I talk, know her more and more with every experience because I'll be reacting the same way she did.
Now, time is running out. There is no point in being angry anymore, and the tough conversations I'd been putting off with my mom about the past won't serve any purpose now. I'd hate to have her leave feeling like she didn't do right by me. So how do I say goodbye? I plan to make each day as good as possible for her, to help her enjoy her granddaughter. That's the thing that really gets the tears flowing -- that my daughter won't remember her. She's only 2, and there is nothing in this world that I can do to force her brain to remember my mom.
In a week she will be coming to my home, my very first house ever in my life, for the first time since my husband and I moved in last year. And she is coming here to die, way too young.
UPDATE:
I flew out to California over the weekend with my husband and daughter to surprise my mom for Mother's Day. The trip was much needed, and she was overjoyed to open her bathroom door saturday morning to find our daughter standing there. Over the next few days, I was brought into reality. My mother is suffering from serious edema, so her bottom half is double the size of her top half; she is jaundiced, so her complexion resembles curry almost. She goes in and out of lucidity, each day we were there seemed to show progression in that area.
We had to have some serious talks with her boyfriend about the probability that she won't be able to come out to live with me at all. But, she doesn't know that. She's become completely child-like, and it's been hertbreaking to watch her struggle with losing control of her faculties. My mom invented a style of handwriting that has garnered her admiration from sales clerks for decades. Every check she signs, every credit card transaction, every document bears a signature worthy of the documents the Founding Fathers signed. She broke into tears yesterday because she couldn't replicate her perfect signature when we were filling out the Medi-Cal forms. She's been diligently reading through her day-planner, making notes, ensuring there is nothing missing.
Ulitimately I came to understand that MY mom, the one I could count on to crack up at my goofy stories, the one whose "hm" of disapproval is worse than an argument, the one whose 4'11" pixie-like frame I towered over at a mere 5'2", is already gone. At least this mom I can still hug, though, and now and then a real laugh emerged over the weekend, and when I wasn't looking it felt like nothing had changed. That was my Mother's Day gift.
Today when we said goodbye, I held on tight. Mom thinks she's moving to Chicago on Monday, and I hope that gives her the drive to keep being strong. What is likely is that I will return home for the duration of her illness, which will hopefully be weeks and not days. I hugged her tiny shoulders a few times, thinking it may be the last, not wanting to let go. I know that I will have to let her go at some point, let her know I'll be ok here without her. But it's all happening to fast, so I'm going to be selfish and just hold on a little longer.
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