Lately

I think my mother is dying. We’re all dying, I know that. But her proximity to death has shifted from an abstract concept in the distant “someday” of my life to more of an “any day now.” No one is saying that though so I’m having a hard time quantifying the part of me that is hopeful she beats her cancer and the part of me that suspects this will be total bullshit. For example, I started typing the sentence “a large part of me is hopeful” but then couldn’t commit to that because it would be a lie. Immediately after backspacing it, I typed and promptly deleted “a small part of me is grateful for,” disgusted by the idea of a silver lining. I’m not sure who I am trying to make comfortable by those statements. Her? Myself? The audience that may be searching for this piece in the corners of the internet, like I did when I was looking for a raft to buoy myself to? 

I’m wondering if it is even necessary to be “grateful” or “hopeful” as I watch her struggle to fill her own glass with water, when just six months ago she was entirely self sufficient. That’s what the literature recommends: remain hopeful, breathe positivity into the situation, manifest some sort of divine energy to promote healing. Normally, I’ll gorge myself on this nonsense. I’ll find comfort in horoscopes, gospel music, sage wisdom from friends and family, therapy, poems, all of it can be trusted. “This will pass.” All that advice is salt and peppered with actionable steps to improve the situation at hand, indicating some level of agency you have. “Go for a walk. Unclench your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Drink water.” And really, truly, if you do that shit, you feel better and the impossible moment passes. Unfortunately, no amount of shifting stars or hydration is going to improve this. I could be a miserable fuck for the next six months and I suspect we’ll still be knee deep in the weeds.

What I have found frustrating is managing other people’s positivity around her cancer. While craving nothing but time together, we’re living through a pandemic that’s prescribed cure is distance. I haven’t hugged my mother. Her siblings haven’t hugged her. She sits nestled against the arm of the couch, wrapped in blankets that have been gifted to her in lieu of the comfort you feel in someone’s arms. I want to scream every time someone makes a thin declaration beginning with “next year we can.” Who guaranteed us next year? In addition to the bargaining, my mother is also in the habit of taking perspective: “some mothers have small children when they fight cancer” and “some people are dealing with a wildfire, cancer, and the pandemic.” Grief is not for measuring, and I abhor the idea that grief should be stacked up to compare piles, and yet compare piles we are now. “Some people don’t have their mothers anymore.” Every single day someone’s grief becomes immeasurable and our family by the skin of our teeth has made it one day closer to cashing in on the gambles we’re making.

The reason I find these sentiments so maddening is because I have a fixation with wasting the time we do have. My mother’s preferred stage of grief right now is denial. Her expectation is that she can have this, cure it or die, and spare herself the anguish of telling people. It’s her prerogative of course, and largely we’re right there with her but I am finding it hard to deny myself the things I want to hoard for fear of being left without having collected them at all. The feeling of my mother’s arms. The sound of her laugh in a room full of her sisters. The clarity of her unmasked voice telling a story I haven’t heard. The smell of living rooms and people sitting too close together singing along. Stronger still is the need to give things away. To tell her “your time feels limited and I want you to know I love you.” To assure her we will be okay if she has to go by putting things in order. To offer every bit of time I can scrounge to spend with her. It’s not that we haven’t shared any of this but that it was done without intention and I do not want to stand at the foot of her casket, or in a room next year without her, having been someone who failed to heed the ever ominous warning of taking things for granted.