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| Our Family Photo from Thanksgiving 2011 Travis, Kassie, Dad, Mom, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Vickie, Max, Me, and Murphy |
It has been four months since I said goodbye to my mom.
Actually, that’s not true -- we said our goodbyes before
that, and I’ve been saying them ever since.
I think my goodbyes began on October 14th of last
year, the day after I had my gallbladder removed. My parents had gone to
Chicago for chemotherapy at The Block Center, and then traveled to Lincoln so they
could be with me after my surgery. My mom wasn’t doing very well – her liver
was not recovering from the chemo, and she was starting to show signs of liver
failure. Her skin had a yellow tinge, and she was very, very tired. The day
after my surgery, my mom was too weak to go up the steps to our apartment, so
my parents decided to go home so she could rest and be more comfortable.
I thought that was the last time I was ever going to see my
mom. I was recovering from gallbladder surgery, which wasn’t super invasive as
it was done entirely laparoscopically, but I was hurting, and I was very weak.
I wanted to be with them, but I could barely do the steps, myself.
So, my parents left, and I said goodbye.
I look back and realize that that was such a huge moment for
me. It was my first realization that my mom might not beat this disease. That
she might not see my sister get married, or either of us have children. That we might never go shopping together again, or do all the things we’d planned to do “someday.”
It isn’t that I gave up or lost faith – I saw a glimpse of how dire the
situation was – something my mom had never let me see before.
Every birthday and holiday that followed became extra
special and meaningful. We took family photos at Thanksgiving – that alone is
something I will always be thankful for. I stopped going out as often when I
was home, and instead stayed in to watch HGTV with my mom. I started thinking
more seriously about the future, including things like children and my career.
Something else also happened during that time after my
surgery – I felt a very abrupt change in my mom’s attitude. Again, I don’t
believe for a second that she gave up or gave in, but she was so, so sick, and
so, so tired. She’d made so many changes, so much progress, and gained so much
time because of it, but now her liver was suffering due to all of the chemo and
drugs that had been forced through it.
There is only so much a body can take.
This is the reality I denied for many, many weeks after she
died. Why didn’t we find different doctors? She’d had no trouble in the past leaving
doctors in favor of ones who shared her attitude and views, so why didn’t we do
more? When she went for her final doctor appointment two days before she died,
why didn’t they do anything for her then? When I begged the attending physician
at Saint Luke’s to put in the catheter to drain the fluid that was building up
inside her because her liver wasn’t doing its job anymore, why didn’t she do
anything else for her? Why weren’t the doctors at the Block Center presenting
us with new plans?
Now I know and believe that there is only so much a body can
take. And by spending the past three years working WITH her body by feeding it
the nutrients it needed and depriving the cancer of the toxins and sugars it
needed to grow, she surpassed the expectations of all of her doctors.
Sometimes, though, I am just a greedy little girl who doesn’t
care about any of that, and just wants her mom.
One of my daily rituals has become that “active mourning”
exercise that I shared with you in my last entry. Once a day, I sit down
somewhere quiet and look at photos of my mom with me, my sister, and my dad.
Sometimes I cry, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I feel better afterwards, and
sometimes I feel worse. It all depends on how I woke up that day.
I think I’ve been waiting since last October to feel like my
old self again, but I’m starting to think that is never going to happen. As my sister so aptly put it, “This is my life now.”
There’s
no going back. Only forward – and that is something I can try to do to honor my mom
who was such a perfect example of moving forward when it was the hardest thing
to do.
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| Mom and Dad, Thanksgiving 2011 |
