Today was the day that I told my friends, my boss, that it was over and there was nothing they could do for my mom. The night of the 6th, the doctor said she “wasn’t wean able”, meaning they couldn’t take her off of the ventilator. And I saw the CT – the most recent one – and it was just so bad. The cancer had taken her lungs over, most of what appeared on the scan was white, and she had a large tumor on the front of her left lung. I didn’t see, or maybe I don’t remember, her kidneys but I’m certain they were bad as well. From what the doctor told my sister, the cancer had gotten into the renal artery or vein, and once it has access to that it can spread anywhere and it spreads very quickly; that is why the CT from December 19th and the one from January 5thor 6th were so drastically different. It was in her kidneys, her lungs, her lymph nodes, her bones; it didn’t look like it was in her brain but it might have been – she had said some strange things before going into the hospital that can either be attributed to malnutrition/dehydration or cancer in the brain. It was everywhere. That next day at work, I got the call that her feet were turning blue – a sign that the body is shutting down and pulling blood from the extremities to try and keep the organs going. It was just a matter of time.
Today was the day that I left work early, and didn’t look back until after my bereavement was over. I went to the hospital and sat with her; I had told my boss what was going on, and I said “I think I need to just call it a day, wrap up my work and leave and I’ll come back once it’s all over”. And she agreed, telling me to do whatever I had to do and to take care of myself. I spent the next few days in a fog, thinking about if we had everything in place for the funeral (things like dry cleaning and scheduling for pick-up/drop-off at school had to be worked out). I sat in her room, I paced the hall outside of her room, sat in the cafeteria and stared out the windows in a fog. Not believing that what was happening was actually real – how could it have been real? How did she go from sitting up in bed and talking and laughing and eating to here, on a machine, with a feeding tube, unresponsive. It all happened just so very fast and I was now in crisis mode. I’m the one that walks in, takes charge, makes the decisions that no one wants to make. That’s me.
I know that there are people out there who lose family members and loved ones in much worse ways than how I lost my mom. Car accidents, plane accidents, sudden massive heart attacks, aneurisms, strokes. I think finding someone like that is horrible, much worse than what I endured. If I had gotten the call that she passed in her sleep at home, I think that may have been worse although it’s hard to tell – the other side of the fence doesn’t seem all that green in comparison to my side. I didn’t get to say good-bye either, I didn’t get to tell her I loved her. I got to sit by and watch her die, which was agonizing. Every day I sat and wondered if today would be the day that she would go on her own; and every day I was angry that we weren’t doing what she would have wanted, which was to let her go. I understand why my dad was so reluctant – how do you pull the plug on the one person you have spent your entire life with. They were together from the time they were 15 and 16; my mom was 79 when she died. That’s a really long time and suddenly, to be without her, it must have been heart breaking for my dad and I know that it still is. A year after all of this happened, the pain is still real and is still on the surface. If anything, it’s worse than it was then – a year ago, she was still here and my dad still had hope (for some unknown reason) and we were just waiting; I was in an emotional fog at the time so I don’t think I felt much of anything. But she was still here, at least her body was. Now, she’s gone. The only thing that’s left is just that – things. Her clothes, her movies and books, her bag of stuff from the hospital. That’s all that’s left. And the memories, which are still kind of hazy to some extent, which I hate to the full extent. I want to remember her, who she was and who she wasn’t. I hope the memories become clearer as the anniversary of her passing becomes a memory itself.
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