B6.7.13.17, Perspective

I minute - that’s all it takes for one's perspective to shift on its axis. One minute carefree and joyful to fear, sorrow and anxiety. It just takes a moment to shake you to your core - the threat of losing someone close to you can change everything. You never really know how that feels until you are in the moment, there with everything to lose and no roadmap for how to navigate the situations you're faced with and the feelings plaguing you. Shock is more than an expression it is a physical reaction your body goes through and it takes several paths.

I froze, i listened and partially processed but what went through my mind was crazy. Fear of losing my mom, of never seeing her again, confusion about what is going on, so many questions I don’t know which to ask first, the weight of knowing I will be the one to make any decisions that come if my mom cannot, anger that this is happening to me, disappointment my fun vacation plans for the week are suddenly ripped from me and guilt that I had any feelings of disappointment about my vacation, longing for my partner and children, anger, rage, terror, anxiety, sadness, stress, confusion, overwhelming waves of pain and sorrow and then your brain just shuts you down and says stop. You look around, realize you're sitting in a car in a parking lot at Whole Foods with your teenage daughter who is looking at you with tears in her eyes and fear. You pick yourself up by your big girl panties and smile and reassure her everything will be okay. You start driving to the next place on your planned agenda because you don’t know what else to do and you just cannot think.

Spending the next hour with your daughter before putting her on a train to see her grandmother and savoring every second of it and trying to laugh and smile and love on her as much as you can because now you see how in an instant everything you care for can be put at risk.

Landing on your best friend's door step with no idea of what is suppose to come next, how to feel and what to do you sit and alternate between tears, processing sort of with a clogged mind and making phone calls trying to figure out what is happening and what you are supposed to do. What are you supposed to do? What are you supposed to do? That question just keeps running through your mind like an electronic theatre headlining each time cycling through faster and more urgently. Then the irrational feeling, the ones that doesn't help and don’t solve anything but just sit there like cancerous tumors spreading through your brain at a faster and faster rate - I don’t want to go, what about my vacation plans!, where am I going to get all this extra money to pay for the flight to take care of my mom, what is the right thing to do, should I tell my friends, what should I tell my friends, I need to call my auntie back East, why, what, how, when, why, what, how, when, why, what, how, when on repeat until you just have a hard time focusing on the glass of wine sitting in front of you.

Then you think - HALT! Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired? Basic self care, I need to take care of myself so I can care for my mom and responsibly handle this situation. Eat, I need to eat. Drink I need to drink water as I’m already emotionally exhausted and my head is starting to pound. Now find out what to do now, today and tomorrow. Talk to the hospital, no news. Talk to the hospital, no news. Finally talk to my mom who cannot remember words and is slurring mostly everything. Try not to cry because it's breaking your heart and make sure your mom knows you love her. Ask her what she wants of you, if she is scared if there is anything you can do, is there anything you can do, is there anything you can do - WAIT. She says try to relax and enjoy your vacation and wait until tomorrow so we know more. Okay mom, I love you. I’ll wait until tomorrow. Call the hospital and talk to the nurse to find out when the doctor will see her. Demand they have the Neurologist call you just as soon as he sees her and ask for them to have your mom sign a Medical Proxy form so you are able to make decisions if it becomes necessary. Get off the phone, stare at the wall and try to figure out what the hell am i supposed to do?

Call the hospital again, realize you cannot get anywhere now and resign yourself to wait until the doctor calls you. Then find a way to distract yourself for the next 12 hours so you can be able to face tomorrow. Watch a movie you’ve seen before, eat, drink, watch more TV. Watch TV until yours so tired you think you can fall asleep without thinking about your fear. Pass Out from exhaustion.

It’s 7:30 in the morning and your phone is ringing. Answer the phone and talk to your aunt about the day. Call the hospital to find out if the doctor has seen your mom. Yell at the nurse for telling you not to worry and not having any information. Find out from your mom via the nurse that she’ll have surgery tomorrow. Book a flight, a car, call your aunt, talk to the doctor, pack, talk to your mother-in-law who has your children, talk to the airlines, take a shower, pack, say goodbye to your best friend, take an Uber to the airport and WAIT for your fight. And wait until your flight watching everyone else walking around, smiling, talking, living - don’t they know your mom has a tumor in her head? Buy your mom a gift, a warm sweater and socks for the hospital. Get on your flight and WAIT! Realize you cannot shut the noise up with TV, with music, with a book, with a game. Take out your computer and blog. Expunge the noise in your head as best you can and then WAit!

What will tomorrow bring? What will it

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Well fuck, worst case scenario became reality. Mom has brain cancer and I cannot believe i made it through the past few days without losing my shit. I think it helps that she looks great and is managing to keep a positive attitude - makes me feel like I need to do the same for her and also helps me not focus on the fear but rather being strong for her. Friday I got to spend the entire day with her in the hospital planning for Surgery first thing on Saturday. During the visit from the neurologist we learned that the type of cancer he suspected came with a 14 month long average life expectancy. Thank god it came as a shock to me because i would have felt horrible if i’d broken down in front of her. I managed to hold it off and only cry a little until after the surgery when it was confirmed. Then I cried until i threw up along in the waiting room. I had to hide in the bathroom because I didn’t want to cry in front of strangers for too long.

Saturday I got to break the news to my grandmother, my aunties, my cousin, my mom’s brest friend and everyone but my mom. No one told her and she didn’t ask, I think she needed a day to just heal from the surgery and get the clouds of medication out of her system. Today I told my mom she had brain cancer, that sucked. I had to look away, i didn’t want to cry. She teared up but didn’t cry, not exactly sure why. I think she is holding her feelings in until i’m gone so she can be strong for me, I told her I was suppose to be strong for her but she’s still my mom.

So back to pick up my kiddos from grandma then off to Boston to leave them with my partners and to catch a different flight home the next day. Everything is so fucking surreal. Not really sure how it will all play out but now i have the details to focus on and I know so my fucking imagination cannot run wide and make it worse than it is, not that it can get much worse.

So I’m going to focus on counting my blessings and the positive, I made a list for my mom to go over in her head when she got blue. #1 I get to see my mom now every day for the rest of her life and having lived away from her since i was 14 that is pretty awesome. My children get to grow up with a grandmother close by. My home and property is big enough to accommodate her and her 5 animals. My partner is kind and loving and supportive and isn’t making me feel bad about moving my mom in with us. There are so many more but right now all I can think about is checking out, watching a movie, reading a book or losing myself in something else. I think I need to check out a bit while the storm settles in my heart and it is safe to open again and not be crushed by the pain and fear.

What is happiness, is it neurons firing in our brain in a sequence that stimulates pleasure? Is is the absence of fear or the courage to not care about fear. Why is it that one day something can make you happy and the same thing another day does not. Is interest and fascination the  fear or is it intimacy and connection? We all feel happiness from time to time and seek it like the early humans did food and shelter, we are driven to want happiness is it because in today’s age the struggle for things like food and shelter is simpler than it once was. As we age we understand how short life really is but as children it seems so vast, so endless. Happiness, like life is fleeting and renewing, it is born and dies and born and dies again. So why is it that happiness is the measure of a successful life for somewhere accomplishments and money is to others.

I’m overwhelmed by the injustice of it all. Just when my mom started to seem happier, calmer, just when she was finally free of the influence of angry men, just when she was at the age where she didn’t have to slave away at a menial job to pay the bills, just when she was starting to really find herself this is what the universe gives her. How fucking fair is it? Seriously, rased by a child-molesting asshole with a hero complex, raped as an adolescent, married at 19 to a physically abusive man with serious mommy issues and rage and a sociopathic ability to forget the next day things he didn’t want to remember and then strapped to him and alcohol and drugs and a very angry daughter for 25 years. Now when things seem to finally be going her way this is the the reward the universe gives her? Why now, why not 10 years from now or 20? I know there is no god up there doling out justice because of the horrible horrible horrible things that happen down here to innocent and kind people just because of the the luck of the draw. But I also know the universe is connected, that all things are connected, and it seems on my side that if you're working in the flow of the universe it can reward you. How is it that I was so blessed in this life while my mom wasn’t. How is any of it fair? Now I’ve said it, I’ve written it and complained. I will turn this travesty of luck and misfortune over and give my anger away because I know it is cancer and will eat me and my family alive. I give it all away and ask that if misfortune truly is so random and callus that especially now I need to cherish every second I have with my loved ones. Love my children as much as I can in the time I’ve been given and eek out as much joy as is humanly possible in the all too short existence.

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It's amazing how hard my brain and heart try to normalize and adjust and tell me that everything will be alright and have hope. I keep drifting into the delusion that my mom will be different or maybe she’ll do better than everyone else who's had this disease and we’ll have more than the 14 -24 months they have predicted. Then I sit in a doctor's appointment or deal with medical insurance or try to have a fun weekend with family and it all comes crashing back down around me - the reality that my mom is sick and isn’t getting better. My mom has a terminal disease is only one 911 call, one ambulance ride, one hospital visit away and I’m back down on the floor trying to survive and get by on adrenaline and tenacity while inside my heart is breaking and my mind stuck in a repeating pattern of please god no, please don’t take my mommy from me. I’m suppose to have another 20 years with her, why my mom this just isn't fair. Why her, why someone who has had such a shit life and been beaten up by everything in life now gets beaten up by her body. I just don’t want to accept the reality of it all. I just don’t want to be strong and cheerful and be strong for her. I just don’t want to lose the next 20 years it isn’t fucking fair. But the work it takes to keep it all inside manages to keep her feeling okay I think. I make myself physically exhausted from holding the emotions in until I’m off on my own or with my partner to process things.

Today my mom seemed fine one minute and the next she was frozen in a pattern that seems like a record stuck on the same two seconds. She couldn’t stop and i didn’t know if it was a seizure or a stroke or what but it scared the hell out of me and I called 911. She went in and was fine (relative to have a terminal cancer) and we spent half the day in the ER but I was a wreck and mom tried to talk me out of having her go. I think I needed the trip to the hospital more than she did but the whole ordeal was exhausting and scary and emotional. I’m worn and upset and feeling hopeless again.