Tag Archives: my mama

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The Wrapping Up of Such Sadness.

It’s been 16 long and theiving months of it all; and now that it’s over and my mama has passed away, it feels like a dream: halfway surreal and traumatic, and halfway a street that’s enveloped by fog too thick to navigate.

It’s over.

It’s over.

All I can say is that it’s over.

..and the torment is wrapped up. My mama has lost the fight.

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Candid Moments: Me and Mom on 1/29/2017.

Mom finally got through her second round of chemo yesterday…it’s been a helluva fight for her to just to be well enough to get the course finished. Also, she is officially free of the oxygen tank for now, which is BIG for her given she had 4% saturation when she went into the ICU. 

….told y’all my mama is a badass. 😎

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I Know.

I know what you’re thinking…

You’re thinking dark things to yourself now…like:

how all of those people in your past, the ones you helped nurse through to recovery from breast cancer, colon cancer, even a brain tumor; they’ve all gotten well and forgotten about you, when you needed those kindly offered favors returned. Oh Mama, how well I perceive how you feel.

You’re thinking about all the years that you poured out of yourself into others who are long dead already; you’re thinking about how short your end of the stick turned out to be; you’re thinking that you’ve been conquered by the things that other people do or say…or don’t do or say; you think it’s time to resign and become this helpless refugee who can’t find the motivation in your brain to keep your body moving your bones.

I’m thinking about how strong your spirit is when I look down onto your drawn face and seek out any flicker of light within those sunken eyes; I’m thinking back onto my youngest recollections of you: a beautiful woman in a skirt and pantyhose, wrenching at a flat tire on the freeway shoulder – not giving a fuck. I’m thinking about how much you have gone through in your hard lifetime already, even before Cancer pirated your body and brain; before your partner abandoned you and you became homeless…and, when I think about these things, I can barely breathe. I’m thinking about how you have the right to decide when you’re too tired to fight this bullshit life any longer, to “throw in the towel” as you said this morning to my nodding head and tear-streaked face. I’m thinking about so many things that make me feel as if I’m being strong-armed by some invisible being, robbed and stripped of my medals and badges.

You’re thinking it’s time to go; I’m thinking how much I hate the fact that I understand how you feel, completely.

Mama, you are not helpless, you could never be that; you’re not built that way…but you can be tired; you can be forlorn; just don’t be gone too soon.

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The Immensity Of It All.

It feels as if I have swum too far out and snapped my board in half against a storm.

It feels like I am ever-battered by the disappearance and return of surprise rogue breakers.

It feels so full of darkened, smoky expectations and brewing anxieties.

It feels like such a tiny, shrunken world.

It feels as though my chest and esophagus, ears and eyes sizzle with sadness and grief.

It feels so impossible to take this reality into myself, to accept it as truth.

It feels so immense and heavy and is so hard to carry.

But I am forced to pick it up.

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Selective Listening.

I was aware of the seemingly minor discrepancies that have popped up between my mom’s and aunt’s stories about trivial things at first – but increasingly, these slight alterations in the ways that they perceive things have grown into regular spats between them. I feel like a small child again, stuck between my mom and dad when they argued and said awful things about each other. But now my mom is my dad’s role and my aunt is in my mom’s. My dad and aunt are both “by the book” people; each being a law-abiding citizen and tax-paying voter. My mom…well my mom is just my mom…she’s not into any category by itself, she’s too much of a social butterfly (or used to be) to sit still very for long.

My aunt used to be an ICU nurse, years ago when I was young, before becoming an attorney on the County Counsel; she married well (in terms of security and stability, at least – he’s a jar-head and also a retired lawyer) I think when they are alone, they hardly ever say a word to each other. She loves basketball (being 5’11’, long and lean with legs to stop traffic, even at her age), loves good food and wine, and fosters a rather warped (though rich) sense of humor.

My mom used to move furniture with her (soon-to-be EX) husband, cross-country for decades. We all know the horrible story of her choice in a mate, so she is currently alone. My poor mom is newly homeless, jobless, dying of cancer in one hospital setting after the next with the same three (sometimes five or six) faces hovering around her constantly; mama told me yesterday that she feels helpless and hopeless – like the thorn in the foot.

It was at the wrapping up of such a discouraged conversation, as I folded the paperwork pertaining to her life insurance policy and her bank account back into my purse to mail off on Tuesday, that I turned around to see my stepdad in the doorway of her room, standing with his eyes on the floor in total submission, almost as if he were kneeling at the chopping block already.

Apparently, since my visit to him, he found the balls (although, too late to make any difference) to eradicate my offspring from his residence “for good”, so he claimed.

It became obvious to me within a matter of minutes that they he and my mom have been in contact quite recently, as she had no issue with him pulling up a chair to her bed and sitting with her.

The things he came there for were 1) brought with him certain pieces of mail that mama has been worrying over; 2) told her that he doubled his own life insurance policy since he has no known medical conditions; lastly, but most shockingly and painfully, he announced,

 

“Boo is out of my life for good.”

(I say “painfully” because it was obviously a painful reality for him as he said it to her).

It was at that point that, despite my threats against his life if he came near her, I opted to leave and give them some time once I received the nod and wink from mama. I didn’t want to listen to any of the unhealthy bullshit that they have both grown accustomed to over the time that Boo has been pirating their’ (former) household and lives. I didn’t want to listen to my stepdad (my former karate sensei from the summer between kindergarten and first grade that’s been part of mom’s tribe ever since) talk about planning his own suicide due to the irreversibly damaging choices he’s made for both of them since her diagnosis. And maybe seeing him all broken down and with his bottom lip quivering like that will give my mom some sense of something, after all – who knows?

When my Aunt hears of this, she will lose her gods damned mind and be very angry with me for NOT making my stepdad leave immediately; but that wasn’t what my mom wanted at the time and she is a grown and lucid (for now at least) woman still, isn’t she?

 

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Human Loyalties.

Today, I want to discuss the notion of loyalty; and, what loyalty means at the end of the day to me, at least.

My mama has been married to my my stepdad for just over 31 years (their 31st anniversary was on 28th of December); she has NEVER strayed on him or done him dirty in all that time (outside of the trivial bullshit that people do to each other when they spend too much time together) – and he has never done her dirty either.

When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer on December 6, his initial response was to remain in full-blown denial about it until she nearly died the first time she was taken to the ER (the sudden fever of 104 degrees, C-dif and septic pneumonia). It was at that point that he must have realized how near any time that they had remaining together was to being over; and he began to display dickhead behaviors such as flaking off her appointments, not answering or returning her calls and, most shockingly, never coming to visit her when she was recovering in the hospital ICU.

My mom’s heart was broken by this alteration in his behavior, needless to say; and her feelings toward him changed, accordingly. Due to her compromised immune system, her release from the hospital required certain things directly pertaining to her environment and its safety in the face of her vulnerable and weakened state. Again, he did nothing to make this happen for her to be able to go home to her own house to recover. He refused to kick my meth-addicted daughter out completely and permanently (methamphetamine smoke is NOT an okay element for someone in my mother’s condition, nor are any of the people or things associated with it’s destructive nature); he failed to make the few adjustments that were asked of him, failed to show up for the jobs that he and I were supposed to be covering for my mom, and eventually – he disappeared altogether. Yes. Disappeared.

During the past few weeks of living Hell for my mom and the rest of our family, he has been doing gods know what somewhere else, without even a call to inquire about whether his wife was dead or alive. When my mom began to show signs of true delirium (due to a brain seizure that lasted for 5 days), she would re-surface to lucidity pretty often at first. During those times, she would be heart-broken over and over again to “learn” that her husband had abandoned her. Watching her go through that repeatedly was one of the hardest things I have ever had endure, and something snapped inside of me during that blur of days strung together in my mind; it was something I will never forgive him for, doing that to her during such a crucial time of her dwindling life.

When she returned to the hospital in the grips of the seizure (this most recent time), I finally had the freedom and time to track his sorry down and talk to him face to face, a circumstance that may or may not have been what my mom wanted me to do, but was done either way. I described in minute detail, the nightmarish existence my mama had come under over and over upon realizing his absence in her life; I told him that I hoped he and my daughter were happy for what they’d done to my mom; I told him if I ever saw him anywhere near her hospital room or subsequent residence, I would have a bullet put through his brain. I told him what a piece of useless shit he had been turned into in my own perception, and I also told him that my mom should have left him years ago. The very last thing that I made sure to point out to him was the way that: if the tables had been turned and he had been diagnosed with cancer or some other terminal illness, my mom NEVER would have abandoned him. NEVER.

Before I left, I reiterated my threats to him, if he comes near my mama again for any reason.

And those, as rough around the edges as they might be, are my random thoughts on human “loyalties”.

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Guess Who Has Resurfaced?

…For now, at least.

And, I will not squawk at a single thing about her mental return, no matter it’s duration. Gods, it is just so fucking good to see my REAL mom again, after the last few weeks of her  degenerative Living Hell. I honestly believed that I would never get to talk with her all about the traumatic events that have led us here; I was sure we’d never be able to sit and sift through the details that ended with the horrid, 5-day-long brain seizure that she endured right under my nose; I was certain that I would never know why and how it all went to shit so fast for her after her diagnosis…I had prepared myself for the reality that my REAL mama died recently, and what I had in her place was the “New Mom”.

(Didn’t I say that there was definitely something besides depression, fatigue, side-effects of chemo or simply late stage cancer happening to my mama?)

The rest of her once: thick, long, widely admired, randomly touched by friends and strangers, alike “dirty dishwater blonde” hair had fallen out while she was in delirium; and she was not happy at all. A few fruit cups and an whole milk cappuccino later, she was directing me through her bureau to find her new t-shirt. It’s  a shirt I bought her when her chemo started last month; though she didn’t find it amusing, much less wore it. She sported it tonight with her bald head and nose hose as I wheeled her around the grounds of the rehab center in the pouring rain, with the song ‘Whose Crying Now?’ by Journey (her all-time favorite band) playing in her lap. She was totally alert and full of her normal piss and vinegar tonight. I loved every minute of it. It was a gods damned good night.