Beginning of the End

Now is when it started.

The middle of March.

The previous September, my parents went to Hawaii for their 24^th wedding anniversary. (A fortuitous decision, given that my mom would be dead before they could celebrate their 25^th).   I remember mom’s excited anticipation while planning and her pleasure afterwards describing the beaches, crystal clear water, and tropical fish swimming through her legs in the ocean.  

Shortly after that trip, she started feeling ill.   An ambiguous ‘not feeling well’.  Insidious.

She was diagnosed with depression sometime around December. She told me matter-of-factly, “They think I’m depressed.”  I found it strange, since she never struggled with depression before.  I knew she internalized her feelings, but depressed?  I remember her as generally happy – even though she was quiet and pensive, with a tendency to worry.  Apparently, all the pain was in her head.

I was busy in my senior year of high school with swimming practices before and after school, a part time job, babysitting, youth group, swim meets, and friends taking up all of my time.  I can’t help but feel awful I was gone so much, all while she was feeling so bad.

In mid-March, she came home from a doctor’s appointment; I think it was a Friday.  I think it was a Friday because in all my memories, everything big, save her death, happened on a Friday.    I was in the kitchen, leaning against the sink when she told me she needed to go to the hospital.  After all this time, our family doctor did a physical exam.  He must have palpated the ridiculous angry rock-hard mass growing with abandon on her liver.

Did I drive her there?  So many details forgotten and lost. 

A week in the hospital for testing.   

Another Friday.   

I picked out my outfit deliberately.  Dark blue thrift store jeans that made my legs look thin. The navy j.crew henly Chris bought me for my birthday. A white tee underneath.  Purposely casual, well worn, and comforting. I chose those clothes knowing they would be the clothes I wore the day I found out my mother had cancer.

I wanted to stay home from school.  I wouldn't be able to concentrate.  Could I stay home and come to the hospital when they had the results?  An ominous sign, my dad let me skip school without objection.  A battle not even remotely worth fighting.

Have you ever experienced a time when you see each moment pointing you to something that is about to change your life forever?   So clear it has to happen. Too clear for your hope, beyond all hope, that it wont?

March 15^th is that day for me.

Did I drive myself to the hospital?  

I remember being at her left side near the window.  The door to the hall on the opposite side of the room.  My dad was on the other side of her bed.   Did I ask?  Who told me?    None of it matters. 

It’s cancer.  It’s fast growing.  She will start chemo right away. 

I can’t remember if I cried at her bedside, but I remember being pleased I wore my hand picked “for when your mom is diagnosed with cancer ” outfit.  I looked like me, I felt like me – this seemed important because nothing else about me would ever be the same. That outfit marked a before and after. 

At some point, thinking I was holding it all together; I excused myself from the room to walk around.  Fooling no one, I probably walked no more than twenty feet before I found a bathroom in the hall and desperately shaking, I barely shut the door before I collapsed. Heaving sick and crushed, my searing tears pooling in the toilet and on the floor.

Every year.  The middle Friday of March.  It sneaks up and smashes me again. 

So unbelievably sad to recall the beginning of the end.  The beginning, which really started way before. And the end, that doesn't actually ever end.