TEARS
From the time I first heard that my mother had cancer, until the time that I received the call that she was admitted to the ICU, and even after that, there were no tears. There was only the desire to fight along side of her. To do anything that she needed. To “be there” for her—whatever that would mean. No tears.
When I watched her go from a vibrant woman to a silent shell, no tears. When I tried to hug her and she pushed me away because she could no longer take the feel of things touching her skin, no tears. I remember a doctor telling me the technical term for her action, but I swallowed it, like the lump that formed in my throat and forgave it as my mother had forgiven me so many times.
When my father and I had to make the decision to admit her to the hospice room, I didn’t know what that room entailed, but I knew once my mother entered it, she would not be coming out. No tears. We all—my father, my Uncle Mike who was my mother’s brother, and my two older brothers, Lonnie and Todd—gathered in the small hospice room and tripped over one another, and slept on recliners and makeshift bed chairs, and sat on window sills and waited.
The dreams I had while waiting for the inevitable were grotesque and disturbing. One woke me up, and everyone around me as well, for I jumped out of my recliner and yelled out something. I was so frightened by the dream because in it my mother’s bed was bouncing off the floor from her uncontrollable convulsions. She was struggling to breathe and had one hand up by her neck as if she was choking and the other was reaching for me. The room was eerily dark, but I could see that her eyes were wild with terror, and I couldn’t do anything. I think I must have yelled for help and that is what woke everyone up. Through blurry eyes I saw my dad standing in front of me and felt the light touch of his hand on my shoulder, “It was only a dream.” I explained to him that my dream had been of my mother. “She was struggling to breathe. The whole bed was shaking and I couldn’t help her.” My father repeated, “It was only a dream.”
He then explained to me that her passing wouldn’t be like that, that she would simply and quietly slip away. Reassured by his comment and lulled by the sound of my mother’s breathing and the small click of the oxygen machine, I fell back to sleep.
It wasn’t long before the sound in the room changed. It was slight, but startling and we all got to our feet. My father moved closer to my mother’s frail body on the bed. I saw my uncle who had been on the hard chair next to my mother cover his mouth and heard him breathe hard and quick through his fingers. My father turned to me, took a few steps in my direction and said, “She’s gone.”
Tears. It was as if every painful moment came crashing in on me at once. I couldn’t breathe, and my father held on to me so I wouldn’t crumple to the floor. My brothers watched us and wiped their eyes. As I held onto my father, I realized that my mother was free. She would no longer have to endure treatments and vomiting and pin pricks and hair loss and the endless list of demoralizing effects of cancer. It should have been enough for me to realize that she was free, but it wasn’t. She was free and I would have to learn to walk in this world without her…but I was crippled by tears.
