About My Mom

I keep singing random lines from a K.T. Tunstall song over and over again in my head. Sometimes I catch myself singing it out loud.

The line I seem to be singing the most is "I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you."

And I want to keep her here because I am afraid of the gaping void I am going to feel when she is gone.

It's like we are dealing with the moment to moment stuff and surrounding her with people she loves and telling stories and sometimes just sitting in silence...and somewhere in the distant background I hear the beginning of this big sucking sound that is threatening to come closer and take her away from me.

The days have started to run together, but a nurse comes in every morning with a dry erase marker and writes the day and the date on a board across from her bed.

Friday was full of Doctors and treatments. She started radiation and now Maura can't be within 4 feet of her because of the baby. Mom reaches out towards her and tells her she's hugging her from afar. The night after the radiation was rough. I was sitting at the foot of her bed watching her sleep and it looked, for the first time, like there was a battle being waged under her skin. Her sleep was fitful and she was burning up. And she is fighting so hard.

I feel like a jerk sometimes because I feel like I know, in my bones, that there is no hope. But she fights. And then I feel hope when she looks better. And I think about what an ass I am being and how wrong it is for me to not believe in the possibility of her beating this.

But Dr. Smith, the oncologist, came by on Friday and told us that the cancer is not at Stage III as they originally thought, but Stage IV. And that it is not a matter of "if" as much as is a matter of "when."

The radiation is being used to prevent the immediate dangers of her bleeding out or developing pneumonia.

Mom doesn't know it is Stage IV yet. She had told Magee on Thursday that she thinks she can beat this. So we have not told her. And I'm not sure if that's right either. But mom is the one that usually answers those questions for me.

Everything is so hard. And maybe this is part of God's plan. That the first time I have to deal with these things without asking her, I am at least given the gift of being able to look into her eyes while I try to figure things out for myself.

Another line from the song that repeats in my head goes "I've got to be unconditionally unafraid of my days without you."

I keep saying I and ME because these are my feelings, but Magee and Buzzy and Maura are all sharing this pain with me.

Yesterday, we had a full house.

My girlfriends from high school all know and love mom. She refers to many of my friends as her other daughters. Maria brought us all breakfast and the key to her house. She lives five minutes away from the hospital on the street where my Great Grandparents lived. I told Kara that mom needed high protein, fatty foods and the only thing she had touched was bacon, so she drove down from Philadelphia yesterday morning with four pounds of bacon from the Italian Market. Erin was here with a bag full of coloring books and playing cards.

Last Wednesday morning, while I was still back in my life in San Francisco, I had to run an errand in the city. On the way back to the office I stopped at the drugstore for toilet paper. As I was walking down the aisle, I saw Crayons out of the corner of my eye. And I stopped and grabbed a box and put it in the basket. I heard my mother's voice saying, "there's nothing better than a brand new box of crayons."

Later that day, all hell broke loose and I was on a red-eye to D.C.

Lee talked me through packing — thank God—otherwise I'd be sitting here in the cafeteria with a bathing suit on. And I threw the crayons in the suitcase.

So when Erin called and said "I think you need coloring books," I laughed. She brought a big bag full of books and paints and the 64 box of Crayons, which mom always refers to as the "stadium pack" because it looks like the crayons are sitting in bleachers overlooking the coloring that is being done.

Mom is asking me how everyone is doing and is happy to hear everyone is well. She asked about Pen and the girls on Friday and was talking about her collection of Christmas cards and on Saturday they sent her a picture of the girls standing on either side of a big heart that said "Missy." She loved that.

The highlight of the day was a visit from my nephews, Liam and Seamus. They had come straight from the Cub Scout parade so "Poobah" (their name for mom) could see them in their uniforms. At first they were a little uneasy about the tubes and the monitors...but they soon forgot about them and delighted her with their stories and questions.

"Poobah" as in "Grand Poobah" is also what they call her at the office. Rebecca, one of the nurses at the office (another "other daughter' with whom mummy has a sweet and special bond), had come by early in the morning with a plastic Viking hat so mom could have some kind of crown. They brought in a bedside commode and my cousin, Lea, decided that anyone who sat on the commode had to wear the "Poobah" hat. Liam and Seamus were both delighted by that.

Aunt Jane and Uncle John and their youngest, Lea and his wife Jody were here most of the day, too. I went and got a shower and packed up some dinner while they visited.

Everyone left late in the afternoon so mom could get some sleep.

She wanted the TV on, and they were playing some kind of Tom Hanks marathon. The one where he gets stranded on the island was showing. It was perfect, because he doesn't talk for most of the movie. So I was lying in my makeshift bed on the floor and all I could hear were the ocean noises that were in the background of the movie.

Aunt Jane and Lea came back and sat with us for a few hours while I rested. I have little breakdowns throughout the day...and when I looked up through the bedrails and saw Lea watching her sleep with tears in his eyes, I pulled the blanket over my head and cried for a while.

She has been so remarkable to so many people. She has an amazingly huge capacity for love.

Ellen, Dr. Bodurian's wife, came by on Friday morning and gave her a stuffed animal. She has been clinging to it ever since. It has had a bone scan and radiation with her.

Yesterday was the first day that I saw the fear in her eyes.

And I continue to sing the song inside my head:

"So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Whenever I'm falling you're always behind me
Come back and find me
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Cause I feel alone"

I am so lucky that she is my mother.