To move on a feeling

Kindly or cruelly, time has wedged itself between one event and the next, between caring for Mom as she died and sitting with Craig as he took his last breath. Still more time has passed since returning to Silver Spring in October, and subsequently, resuming the life I abruptly left back in June, when I learned that Mom had weeks to live. The memories of that single June week when I briefly returned to Maryland are still fresh in my mind.  I had been in Denver taking care of Mom and Craig for over a month, and though I hated to leave, I needed to return to Maryland to resume work.  That one week was one of the hardest weeks of my life.  Though I was in constant contact with Diane and Jill, I was overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety and isolation.  Mom had been readmitted to the hospital after experiencing more difficulties with swallowing and speaking.  Though she seemed to perk up over the weekend, news from Denver seemed to suggest that her life was moving towards an unforgiving end.  Doctors on the 11th floor were giving her weeks to live.  I felt restless in Maryland, and when Jill, Diane, and I decided that I needed to come back, I booked the first flight back to Denver to be with the family. 

I can remember the Friday before laving for Denver like it was yesterday.  That was the day the doctors told Mom that her journey was nearing its end.  I remember sitting in the same office chair that I fell into when Diane told me to "find a quiet place", and relayed the news that Mom had a brain tumor. A brain tumor. It was the same chair I sat in when Mom uttered with tear soaked words "George is back, sweetheart" in early November. (George was the name she gave her tumor.) Eleven months later, on a Friday afternoon, I sat in the same Herman Miller chair, as I was patched through on speaker phone to Mom in Denver.  The sound of her wailing and sobbing was striking and different than anything I had heard before.  It was the sound of a woman left wanting more from life. The sense of helplessness shattered my heart. I had Jill and Diane hold the phone clsoe to her, so that I could tell her I loved her and that I was coming.

Within 30 minutes, I had left the office with only my computer, literature, and an unparalleled sense of desperation to make it back in time. I had only one goal, one singular interest and that was see Mom before she died. Nothing else mattered. I left on a red-eye the next morning, telling only my colleague Richard that Mom was dying and I didn't know when I'd return. I remember feeling melodramatic as I told him. That week already seemed surreal and disconnected as if I carried a horrible truth but lacked the context to convey it.  How can a person really address the imminent death of a loved one?  My sources of confirmation of "where we were in the process" were back in Denver. We knew how frail she looked; how much she had aged over the months; the physical faculties she had lost.  We saw how much the cancer had taken from her over the months, leaving little else to take. We needn't any convincing. Still, to really believe that she could and likely would pass away "soon" was still an abstract.  It felt awkward and ludicrous to give her death credence by mentioning the possibility out loud.  What if I was wrong?

I had only been back to the DC area for a week before returning to Denver. I think part of me knew all along it was a bad idea to leave Mom in the state she was in. I left only days after her seizure that rocked her body and our foundations. To see her convulsing and turning blue left a sense of powerless I had not yet felt until her actual passing. In the time between her seizure and my departure, she had gained a few new scrapes and bruises, increasing weakness, and had suffered another fall. Still, I had been away for nearly two months and had to return to work.

I still remember that day when I pulled up to Brelle's house to say goodbye before my flight back to Maryland.  Jill and Diane met me at the door with grins on their faces and purple gloves on their hands; they had a "hurried" look about them. I stepped through the door and turned to see Mom lying in her hospital bed.  The only thing she was wearing was a devilish grin and an extremely soiled nightgown. That was my Mom and these were my sisters, and I couldn't have been more proud. Some families would have made a fuss of such an incidence, but not ours.  We reveled in the bonding experience. Just as we had time and time again, Mom and her three girls cracked up with each other as we helped clean her amidst the unfortunate side effects of her new chemo therapy and steroids. Diane made breakfast while Jill and I finished cleaning and dressing her.

I'll never forget watching her eat and memorizing her face. Dressed in her pink striped shirt and black pants, she was leaning considerably to her side as she ate. Nearly a year before, we were sharing drinks and tapas at a restaurant in DC. I remember just how she looked, dressed in black with turquoise accents--beautiful and engaging. We nearly closed the restaurant that night. It's hard to imagine I'd be staring at her nearly a year later, watching her muscle up the effort to eat her scrambled eggs while tilting far to her left simply because a cancer had invaded her powerful brain.

I remember standing in front of her in her wheelchair to say goodbye. A Kleenex was clenched in her left hand; a bite of scrambled egg still filled her cheeks as swallowing was difficult if not impossible for her by that time. I spread my legs into a split to gain a better eye-to-eye vantage as I told her I loved her and that I'd see her again. I'll never forget the way she stared at my lips and then looked into my eyes; I'll never forget her sobs. Leaving her was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. My week in Silver Spring was miserable and disorienting, through and through. Mom needed me, my sisters and Dad needed me, Craig needed me, and I needed them.

That one week was difficult, but on that Saturday flight home to Denver, I held tight to the knowledge that Mom was still coherent and awake and that I'd be able to hug her once again and tell her that I loved her in person. Nothing in life was more important. I remember Diane and Jill picking me up with a Diet Orange Sunkist in hand and their usual briefing of where we were.  We had grown accustumed to doing "handover briefings" for those of us away from the action -- this time is was me. I couldn't believe how surreal it felt. I remember walking into the hallway of the llth floor back in April when Craig was admitted for fevers.  I had been in Oklahoma taking care of Mom, and subsequently, hadn't seen him since March.  Night had already fallen by the time I arrived.  The luminance from his IV monitor and track lighting dimly filled the room and shed light on his thin frame. A washcloth draped over his eyes. Then, his belly was still relatively flat and he was still mobile, self-sufficient.

Fast-forward a few months and it was as if I was making the same rounds, but this time with Mom.  I towed the same piece of luggage as I walked passed the name board to see Mom's name, as well as Craig's, who had been admitted across the hall in order to receive his 4th Hickman.  Craig was exiting her room and crossing the main lobby with IV stand in tow when I arrived.  I gave him a quick hug and quickly entered Mom's room.  She began to cry the moment she saw me. I came to her side and fell into her arms. I remember mumbling in a narcissistic and sarcastic way something to the effect of, "fear not, the world is right again, no need for these understudies", which made her laugh.  But truly, it was my world that was complete.

A week and a half later, she was gone. Craig was readmitted to the 11^th floor for anemia two days after her passing.  It was hard for us to enter the hospital doors knowing that Mom was still with us, but in the hospital morgue.  Just like that, she went from a person we saw every day, to being a memory. 

I remember feeling a sense of anxiety and panic during that one week in June when I was back in Silver Spring. An urgency deep in my gut spoke of a horrible and imminent reality, yet I had no experience in which to judge the circumstances and build confidence to move from a feeling to something more tangible and known, from something that seemed at first dramatic, to knowing that Mom's dying process was really happening.  

Thankfully, I acted.  I moved on a feeling, and not from it. ~E