My mother was taken to the emergency room in the wee hours of the morning on September 24. On Thursday, September 29, she was diagnosed with small cell carcinoma of the lungs, extensive stage.
On September 30, her oncologist met with her and then with my father, brothers, sister and me to explain that as aggressive as this cancer is, it is also quite often responsive to chemotherapy. Given her age and other health problems, she -- and we -- knew that the initial round of chemotherapy would be very difficult, and perhaps even fatal, but the odds were still squarely in her favor.
On October 1, she was moved to a second hospital's ICU, where chemotherapy began.
That was the the last day I ever heard her voice. I had just finished my second half-marathon and called to let her know I had done well. She was proud of me. There was so much background noise I could hardly hear her, and we had to cut the call short. Friends were in town to participate with me, and with the blessing of Mama and my siblings, I spent the rest of the day and evening enjoying their company. She was intubated before I had a chance to hear her again. It is fitting, somehow, that the last words I heard from her were those of encouragement and pride: it was her nature to be a cheerleader for everyone she loved.
The next 17 days were a roller-coaster. As the chemicals that could save her spread through her body, the effects became more and more difficult for her to bear and for us to watch. Even so, she answered each of us with a thumbs up when we'd ask, "Mama? Are we still fighting?"
For a time she could communicate with us using a dry erase board my sister thought to make available. We got lots of interesting messages, some of which we didn't fully understand but later discovered
did make sense, but the one I will hold in my heart forever is this one:
The date underneath is not correct, and we all shared a good laugh about it when the error was caught. In our haste to erase and let her keep "talking" we just didn't notice it. This has become, for me, the first little landmine, because this date is in a future Mama will not be here to see.
My father, brother, and I visited her at lunchtime on October 18. She was beginning to get to the other side of the worst part of the first cycle of chemotherapy. She had been extubated the day before, and now was receiving oxygen through a tracheotomy that was generally agreed would be a vast improvement for her. We left that visit with every expectation that the week ahead would see daily progress being made.
Later that afternoon something -- we still don't know what -- went horribly wrong. My sister was alone at the hospital when it happened, and word quickly spread and we all scrambled to be where we were most needed. I think in our hearts that while we all believed this was a crisis, it was surely not a final one.
I was staying with my father when I got the call that things were irreversibly wrong, and it fell to me to tell Daddy that the woman he had loved virtually his whole life was not going to survive the day. We got to the hospital as quickly as we could, but we did not make it in time. Mama was gone.
Like every other person who has lost a parent, I am discovering every day how very much life will never be the same. I decided to use this format to record those little landmines that have occurred in the days following Mama's death, and that I know will continue for years to come.
In a very selfish way I am going to use this space to be my therapy. I've heard about people who cut themselves intentionally in order to let go of pain or stress, and I never understood that until now, because I believe written words will become my thousand little razors.
This will be a place of grief, but also of healing, and laughter, and remembrance. And love.
Always, always, love.
