I told myself I wouldn’t dwell, but it’s seemingly impossible to not think about it. To think about where I was at this moment and what I was doing. We were at the hospital, it was the first time Rob had been there with me since she went in and it would be the one and only time. We knew it would be that day; my sister wanted to wait until the next to give my dad more time, but as my dad said before he left “what’s the point”.
You never know how you’re going to deal with something until you’re faced with it. On the outside, I’m sure I appeared relatively calm and maybe even cold at the time. I knew for days that we would have to turn off the machines; my sister was grasping at straws for days, had me call the Cancer Institute to see if they would review her file for one last chance at possibly getting her off the machines – I still struggle with the idea that they didn’t even attempt to do anything with the cancer, try to stop it from growing. My dad was in denial, praying for a miracle that I knew wouldn’t come. And as sure as I was that it was coming, that day, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I paced, I rung my hands quite a bit and played with my hair nervously, I shifted in my shoes as I stood up against a wall and stared at my mom trying to think of something else other than I was watching my mother die. And when it came, when I had to tell the nurse, when they came in and took all of the tubes out, and when she was gone, I didn’t know what to feel or what to do. I didn’t feel “peace”; I didn’t feel much of anything except for “oh, she’s gone”. We sat with her for over an hour before the nurse came in and said “she’s getting ready to pass”; they told us it wouldn’t take long but she held on for as long as she could. She didn’t want to die – which is something that plagues me regularly. There’s a part of me that continues to feel responsible, and I think I might always feel like this. I didn’t force her to go to the doctor earlier, and when I did it was much too late. I ordered the morphine, I told my father and sister we were keeping her alive for us. I talked to the doctor, I talked to the rest of my family. I feel responsible for letting her get as sick as she did, for watching her get sick, and doing nothing.
I don’t know if I could have saved her, if some doctor could have saved her, or if I could have prolonged her life – and I know that if she had been in treatment, what life she did have probably wouldn’t have had much “life” in it. I wish that I could know, but I never will. I will live with this doubt and this guilt for the rest of my life. And today, as I am forced or force myself (depending upon how you look at it) to relive that day, the guilt and the feeling of responsibility are greater than they usually are. And I miss her more today, because it’s been more than 6 months since I last saw her smile, last heard her voice, last saw her in the kitchen cooking and complaining about my dad/the stove/the fact that too many people were in the kitchen, and it’s been too long since I saw my daughter smile at her. 6 months go by quickly, even if sometimes it feels like an eternity.
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