There are three words you never want to hear together; “cancer”, “brain”, and “mom”.
I got to hear them last December. I got a call on the 4th, flew cross-country on the 5th, and waited in the hospital while she had surgery on the 6th. She was home in a couple days. Then there were appointments with the oncologist, and six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. She seemed better, and worse, and better again. It was all for naught, it seems; they took an MRI after the treatments and the inoperable part of the tumor was bigger than when they started.
We took care of her at home for as long as we could, but she needed skills that we just didn’t have. I found a nursing home and we moved her there on the day after Easter. She died last week.
She had great help. Friends she’s known for decades came out of the woodwork to look after her while I chased around for medical records and insurance forms. The staff at the nursing home and from hospice looked after her; never in much physical pain and there was medication to help relieve her anxiety. She grew less and less responsive, but she had music, flowers, friends, and time to sit outside in the sun.
I joke sometimes that I could have a family reunion in the corner booth at Denny’s. There’s me, my brother, and my uncle (married to my mom’s sister until she died about fifteen years ago). And there’s my dad, who my brother hasn’t spoken to for thirty years. And my stepmother. And that’s about it.
I’ve never known quite how to respond to threads like this. Now that I’m writing one, I still don’t. I guess I would ask each of you to do something my mom would have liked. Grow a flower, go to an opera, give your cat a treat, play a game of bridge with old friends.
I was lucky that I could put everything on hold to look after her. I’ll be back to Boston next week to move out of my apartment and put my stuff in storage. Back to Tacoma to settle th estate, then apartment hunting in Boston again. And then maybe get the rest of my life back together.
