This is so not happening!

Phase One, denial.

Ran over to mom's after work again today. She's still at M.D. and I got a few more bills in the mail to write checks for. Fed Buffy. She looks like she might be getting another tumor on her belly. Locking up, I glance back at the room. In a perfect world, I could leave this house exactly as it is today. It's my comfort.

I pull out of the driveway and stare at the house as I drive around front. The yellow bricks seem to look so aged and tired, as does the yard. The hedges once provided a full, thriving trim are now shabby and thin, and the yard seems to have gone grey as well. I visualize the healthy yard we grew up with and I can hear the sound of children - of me and my sisters, chattering, laughing, fussing, and just being silly.

Tears.

I drive away and cry as I think about how much things have changed since we all lived in the house. My father has died. My mother will, inevitably, pass one day too. I am growing older and some day it will be me looking death in the face. I used to think I was not afraid to die but, in this moment, I question myself. Am I, afraid of death? Why am I crying? Because I am afraid of losing these things? These situations? These people? What is it that Elizabeth Gilbert said in the movie Eat, Pray, Love in her letter to David? The only real trap is our attachment to anything. If I have no fear of dying because of my full-faith in an afterlife, then why am I crying? Maybe, I do have doubts and, consequently, attachments?

I remember the child I was as I shimmied up the pole to the birdhouse high in the sky so I might witness the miracle of a young hatchling. I was young and I could swing from the tree branches just as good as any real monkey. I was young and I would bike race the boys in the hood, determined that this time I was going to win!  I was young and I sat in the middle of the street practicing my hammering skills with my dad's nails driving them deep into the soft, black pavement so as not to cause any flats. I was young and in search of the smallest, strangest bug one could find. I was young and I dug up arrowheads from the dirt at the end of our driveway (no shit! real arrowheads!). I was young and I lay on the driveway soaking in the warmth exuding from the sun and concrete, and watching the clouds as they drift across the sky. I was young and I sat on the rooftop for a moment of quiet, reflective solitude. I was young and my goal was to never grow old enough that I would ever have responsibilities such as monthly bills and a job.

But, here I am. 

I wonder if my mother just wants her mother. I wonder if my mother no longer desires to mother me but prefers that I mother her now.

I'm home. Drew is having trouble focusing on her school work. She needs direction. We'll have another "talk". Candice needs a ride home and we have a nice chat about the car and Aaron. (This morning, Candice hit the curb - and hard. It blew the tire and bent the rim, but good too.) Home again after dropping off Candice, I start going over the kids schedules for the week, but stop to call mom instead. I'd received an email from Aunt Carolyn this morning stating that she was doing really good. The nose tube was out again, she was able to start on liquids again (and she's keeping them down okay). The bag on her bumm (which collected the "leak" from the fistula had been removed. And, in general, mom was doing better and Aunt Carolyn is thinking of going home this week as she is feeling less needed (finally). My aunt has been through so much during mom's cancer recurrences, and naturally, it's exhausted her a lot. 

I can only imagine.

The phone rings and my aunt answers.  "How's it going?" I chirp expecting to hear all the good news again.

She replies, "Well, I'll let you talk to your mom."

Mom gets on and I ask again how things are going. She immediately tells me...

She immediately tells me...

.....

.....I'm numb. This isn't happening.  I just can't process it - not yet. But when then? How? I don't understand and my response is much the same as when I received the news about dad. 

"What are you talking about?" 

"What are you trying to say?" 

"Are you sure?"

"I don't understand." 

"Are you sure?" 

"What are you talking about?"

Apparently, mom had 3 or 4 more tumors pop up recently and during the surgery on her fistula they biopsied them. Today, Dr. Burke's assistant came to meet with mom and began to cry as she broke the news to her. Mom has only 3 months to 1 year to live. A chaplain had come in to visit and pray with mom just before this.

And, so, Mom isn't coming home. 

She isn't coming home - ever. 

She will end up checking into the M.D. Anderson Hospice Center and remain there until her passing.

I'll never get to just sit in the living room with her to visit and watch tv... ? I'm selfish. I needed those moments.

Mom goes on talking to me about arrangements, and the location of things, and I don't even know what else. She is just going through the motions and it's obvious that she is just as numb as I. I listen to her voice but not her words. She sounds good. She sounds healthier. She sounds lucid. She sounds, numb.

I don't know what to say and I don't want to say anything. I can't think. I can't feel. Every time I allow myself to think or feel, I cry. 

Aaron's birthday is this month and I don't want him to associate this with his birthday so I'm not ready to tell him. I can't let any of the kids know until May. But then there is Drew's birthday. How long can I keep this in? How long should I keep this in? Aaron despises secrets. He would want me to tell him asap. Maybe I should.

This is death.

I think about Candice and how she and her family watched her grandmother die ever so slowly in there own home. Maybe they can offer some words of wisdom to me.

The thought of life going on after you die. You are dead and people still laugh. Still fight. Still move. Still enjoy life. What is going to go through my mother's mind? This woman who I always thought of as such a rock, such a strength; but today, she is feeling so weak. Is she getting mentally ready to actually embrace death? No way, my mom will cry all the way to it. 

What if this were me? What if I were the one passing away? Would I feel alone?

How will we deal with this?

I remember - I know how. I have to be strong for my kids. Teach them to deal with this in a healthy way. This is a spiritual situation and it can be beautiful.

*

Liz's letter to David in Eat, Pray, Love:

"Dear David, We haven't had any communication in a while and it's given me time I needed to think. Remember when you said we should live with each other and be unhappy so that we could be happy? Consider it a testimony to how much I love you that I spent so long pouring myself into that offer trying to make it work. But a friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came, they trashed it along with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor, how could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would one day be in ruins? It's one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over centuries. It feels like a precious wound, like a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same, David. Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked around  in this place, at the chaos it's endured, the way it's been adapted, burned, pillaged, then found a way to build itself back up again, and I was reassured. Maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic. It's just the world that is and the only real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation. Even in this eternal city the Augusteum showed me that we must always be prepared for endless waves of transformation. Both of us deserve better than staying together because we're afraid we'll be destroyed if we don't."