Loss

In so many ways, both happy and sad, Kathleen’s and my lives have complemented each other, as if we were two sides of a coin. We met at the end of our college careers (her Master’s, my bachelor’s) and took the same career paths. When I began having kids, she got a dog. She moved to Brooklyn, and I to Denver, within weeks of each other.

And on the day she lost Garth, I began the process of losing my mom.

On the day Kathleen lost Garth (I will not give the date; right now I want to pretend it never happened), my mother was rushed to the hospital with symptoms both sudden and alarming (loss of speech, inability to walk, uncontrollable vomiting) and was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer. Stage IV. Inoperable. She is in treatments to buy a little time with us, but how much is unclear. She had been a smoker for years but quit nine months ago and, about five months ago, developed a vicious cough that doctors wrote off as myriad, less serious things. If you want the names of doctors who write off a longtime smoker’s debilitating cough as “nothing serious,” drop me a note.
I am in North Carolina now and will be a lot over the next few months, seeing the old friends and visiting the old places. For the next few months, at least, I will have two homes. I will have a route – a very, very long route – that will take me through the homes of far-flung family members as I make this drive with the kids over and over. I will have to learn how to deal with the needs of my mother and balance them with the needs of my children as we prepare for hard times; how to deal with my autistic sister’s needs; how to make sure my dad takes care of himself during this period (which he has not been doing); how to meet the needs of my family and balance them with the needs of all the people who want to wish her, and us, well; and, somewhere in there, sleep. If I can get to sleep, which hasn’t happened much. At night I am finally alone, left alone to process the day, and my heart finally breaks.

It’s so nice to have a friend like Kathleen who, somehow, manages to go through many of the same things at the same times. As she deals with her heartbreak, and I with mine, we know that neither of us will be alone.