My mom has been in Palliative Care for 6 weeks now. She has cancer in her bones, liver and brain. She is dying. Her skills and self-awareness are slipping away, day by day.
I'm not worried about her, in the immediate practical sense: she is getting good care and she is in a safe place. Moreover, she seems aware of those two things. Gifts, both. She is not in pain and she seems contented. I am deeply grateful for her physical comfort, beyond muscle atrophy and stiffness from inactivity. I am pleased that she was able to choose the hospice where she is now living and that so far, we haven't had to make any terribly hard decisions about her care and welfare. I have a large family who are devoted to her and to one another. Many, many people are caring for my mother--so many in fact that I do not have to be in attendance every day. Another gift.
I am upset that she is dying. I will miss her as a constant, if distant, presence in my life. I will miss the link to my past. I knew that her process of dying would be hard for me--that's as it should be. I didn't know the reasons it would be so hard are the same reasons that the intersections of our lives have been so hard.
I feel like I should have known this. I'm reasonably clever--doesn't seem like rocket science to think that people are people and a little thing like cancer is not going to change thirty or forty years of shared history. Because it doesn't. I'm still uncomfortable around my mother for the same reasons I always have been. And the same goes for her, I think. We fear each other's judgements and thoughtless assumptions and differences. I am frustrated with her simplifications and she is bored by my ribald humour. Our fall-back positions are part of the problem.
None of this is new. Even the dread I feel as I head west on the 401 isn't new. My stomach writhes and I procrastinate and delay. My shoulders tighten and my neck aches. I hate the feeling that there is something I should be doing, something I want to be doing, but it won't come to life organically. It shambles along and gathers dust and the rats move in. It decays and stinks and creeps. It grows into an anxiety garbage heap and teeters there in front of me.
I want to be able to tolerate visiting my mother. I hate the helplessness I feel when faced with her infirmity. I hate that I do not know what she wants or how to help her. I hate that people think I've attained some sort of enlightenment for going and sitting next to her bed, when really what I'm doing is jumping up at any chance to do an errand outside of her room. I hate that people, kind people, are convinced of how much I will treasure these memories in the future. Recall tends to put a shine on things, smoothes out the rough edges--but I'm not sure that the buzz-saw in my gut can be dulled down to something precious.
I hate that I hate visiting my mother. I hate that I watch the clock until it is time for me to leave, that I set myself deadlines for how long I 'have' to stay. I hate that I comfort myself by thinking of these visits as short-term. I hate that I cannot seem to overcome these flaws, these self-centred, self-consuming miens.
The relief I feel when coming home from my mother's side is ill-proportioned. I am almost giddy when arrving at my home. Friends who have caught me in that moment must wonder at my seemingly gleeful answers to their sombre questions. I hate this relief, too, but I also need it. It is the drug I need to forget the pain of helplessness. I hate that I have to work so hard at being there, at being gentle with myself, at forgiving myself.
Where does this leave me? Well, crying in my car, this week. And at her bedside, and in Walmart, and in the Thai restaurant...Yep. I was that girl. Crazy, out of control, doesn't-know-enough-to-hide-away-and-weep girl. Or lost-her-stiff-upper-lip girl.
Where do I go from here? Same place as always, I guess. Trying to be 'good.' Trying to find a place that feels close to the me that I am and the me that I want to be. Trying to find my honourable self. My desperate, losing, learning, not-so-wise self. My self that can recognize, offer and accept some easing of this tumult. That can let my stomach unclench and my heart rest. A self that can let time, and my mother, pass away peacefully.
