Today, if you didn’t know is Mother’s Day. I am a mother and
by default of being born, I am a daughter too. I spent most of today with my
mother.
My mother is dying from cancer right now. I am well aware of
the fact that today may have been my last Mother’s Day with her. I took a nap
today and I keep wondering if that nap will bother me next Mother’s Day.
She lives with me and
I do my best to try and help her each day through this process. It is one of
the most difficult things I have done in my life. All of the reasons I find
this task difficult are completely selfish and revolve around my feelings. Her
feelings about her condition come in a distant second to my own on this topic.
I hate seeing her sick because it makes me very
uncomfortable. I want her to get better
because I want my pain to stop. Did you catch that? “My pain to stop” Nice, huh? I cannot beat myself up on this point
however because I know that if I could make myself feel any different about
this situation I would. I have tried and I just can’t. So this is how just how I
feel. I am given the chance to cope with those feelings every day and do my
best with them. I have no idea how I am
doing.
I hate coming home and seeing her in bad shape. I feel
really lost when she is having a tough day. When she looks at me it seems like
she is expecting me to know what to do and I just really don’t most of the
time. I do my best to make her laugh and help her feel comfortable. I see so
much fear in her. She is fighting, but it seems like she is struggling against
the wrong opponent.
She does seem easier to laugh these days and she does find
happiness in really simple things. Today our big day consisted of buying
groceries and a sandwich at Subway. She kept saying she wanted to “Eat Fresh”
and she would make the word "fresh" really breathy, the way they do in the
commercials. it made me chuckle every single time. That is not something she would have done before cancer. It is a shame it took this for her to start to
see the joy that is in her world, but that is one blessing of death coming
slowly. It puts the important things in perspective.
My father died some time ago and his death went much the
same way. He was in a great deal of pain right up until the end and really
pissed off about dying.
Time is so funny and
it has its way with each of us. Time does the same thing to us all and yet we
each have our own peculiar reaction to it. In Plato’s Apology Socrates says he
does not fear death because he has lived a good life. He says that death could
be “the greatest blessing”. That either we go on to “heaven” or that it is like
a long sleep that we never know we are having. Either way he did not fear it.
Plato recounts Socrates speech in the Apology as what Socrates is saying when
his own life is on the line. Did he feel that way because he was old and wise
or because he was enlightened? Why is it my parents could not face death with
the same resilience?
The more I learn about myself the more I understand where
I have come from or maybe it is just the reverse. Both of my parents had
difficult childhoods and both were molded in ways that showed the scars. My
father lived a great deal of his life angry and my mother lived a great deal of
her life scared. To expect them to react in any other way to their own
mortality is my shortcoming, not theirs.
I am their daughter and a product of their home. I am a
product of both of their lives and when this is over, both of their deaths as
well. No matter what happens to them beyond death, one thing is for certain. A
large part of them will live on in me because I am them. I am their strengths and weaknesses. I am
their miscalculations and misunderstandings. I am their joy and their love.
Everything I am started with everything they were, are and will become. They
are my biggest advantage to life and my largest hurdle to overcome.
They are my parents and soon they both will be gone. The family
that started with two, then three will be down to one. I will never be anyone’s
little girl again, never be anyone’s baby. I will be what is left of two lives
that meant so much to my own life. The part of my life where I am the child
will exist no more.
This is what time does to us all, if we are fortunate enough
to live that long. This is a rite of passage and a transition that only happens
to the ones who make it this far. Just like my first day of school, my first
kiss or my first heartbreak… this is a gift.
A gift I don’t feel ready for-but one whose time has come. My parents
are showing me how to die, even if it is in what not to do when it is my turn
with my daughter. That is what parents do, they teach. As their child I do my best to learn. Just
like with so many of their lessons, I don’t want to learn this one.
