The cruellest day

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the date I began the process of losing my mother, and of when Kathleen lost her lovely dog. I am the Bartleby of May 1. I would prefer not to have tomorrow. I would prefer not to get out of bed. I would prefer not to do anything. I would prefer to move on to May 2 and try to move on with my life. Some days are better than others. Maybe I will get so immersed in the work with which I surround myself that I will not even think about the anniversary. Maybe I will think about it when it's too late, and I will realize that I really should have called my dad.

I realize now, as this all coincides with the third anniversary of my moving here, that so much of my idea of North Carolina as Home was tied up in the fact that my mother was there. Through good times and bad, I loved her. She sometimes vexed and frustrated me as I suppose only mothers can do. She was not perfect (nor, for the record, am I). But I loved her, and she would not leave that place, and she was home. And now that she is gone, I feel like it's just a place, even if it's one in which I spent so much of my life. My home is now wherever I choose to make it. I suppose Colorado is as good a place as any.

I realize that I really haven't written about the 100 days that followed May 1. I spent much of the summer in North Carolina with my mother, trying to enjoy the time we had, not knowing how much of it we would have. She said things that I suppose she wished she had said earlier. I continued to wish she wouldn't say them, because I knew that her act of saying them meant that she thought the end was near.
I wanted her to fight. I wanted her to dig in and hold on. Of course I wanted that. I could not dream about being in her shoes; I could not know what it would feel like to have my lungs full of fluid, to be so tired as to wish for death, to feel the need to say all the things in my heart for fear there might not be another chance.

In June, before she contracted pneumonia and nearly died, she and I went shopping. She, frail and foggy and lugging her oxygen tank, couldn't go far, but we did get her a new dress and she loved it. She bought earrings for me and clothes for the kids. Shopping always had been her hobby and her sport, and I remember so many shopping trips with her; but although I am grateful for all of them, I am grateful for that one painful trip perhaps most of all. Though she was weak, it gave her joy.

I had promised her that I would shave my head once she lost her hair. She begged me not to -- my hair hit my waist. But a promise is a promise, and on July 3, I took the plunge and went from all sorts of hair to pretty much no hair. As emotional as that was, what was more so (for me) was that my daughters, son and husband did it as well. (The baby got a pass as he couldn't speak for himself.) Our fuzzy little family got lots of strange looks for months. "Look at them! They've all got the same haircut!" I promise I will never make stupid remarks about anyone's appearance ever again. Who knew shaving heads could be such an exercise in compassion?

There were many visits; the last was at the end of July for her 60th birthday. She could barely keep her head up, and the whole week she was depressed and exhausted. Her red blood cell count, as it turned out, had gone through the floor, and once she got fluids she was like a new person. That was a great night. She broke out the hydrogen peroxide and gave our little peach-fuzz heads highlights. We watched movies and played music and practically had a slumber party.
Of course it couldn't last, and by the next morning -- the morning I was to leave to help care for my husband's grandfather in Indiana (he is now gone as well; it was a terrible year) -- she was bedridden and exhausted again. I postponed my leaving for an hour, and I sat on the floor by her, in the dark, and we talked. She told me she never dreamed, when she went into the emergency room, that they would tell her she had cancer. I told her the silliest little-kid jokes I could think of, anything to force a smile, and she actually laughed a lot. We talked about food. "I want watermelon," she said. I went to find some, secured some, gave her a kiss and a hug and got on the road.

From an e-mail I wrote August 8:
"While I was in Cary, Mom was hospitalized with dehydration and a dangerously low red blood cell count. After 2 1/2 pints of blood plus fluids, she felt much better and was allowed to go home. However, by the next morning she was weak again and neither eating nor drinking much. This continued for the next couple of weeks until Monday, when Dad and my grandma felt they just couldn't care adequately for her anymore and sent her to the hospital again. Her red blood cells appear to be fine (low, but not so low); however, her white blood cell count is through the roof, and her lymph nodes are swollen. The doctors can't find any obvious signs of infection. ... There is suspicion that these are signs that the cancer has spread. She also has a cyst on the back of her shoulder that has caused her pain for a few weeks, and they are removing that tomorrow and examining that for possible cancer spread. Today they did a full-body CT scan to try to figure out what's going on. She actually seems to be breathing better. She hasn't been on oxygen for a couple of weeks and has plenty in her system, so that's good. It just seems like now, everything else is bad."

The morning of August 9 began with a call from Dad. The upshot of it was, the cancer had in fact spread to every major system (and that WAS what that damn cyst was; I had been nagging her to demand a biopsy for weeks), she wasn't going to get better, and it was time to consider hospice. It was a crappy way to start the day, and I cried for most of it. Somewhere in there, my husband broke the car, I made calls to tow shops, and I shopped for plane tickets.
That evening, while making dinner, I started singing "Amazing Grace." It just popped into my head. I looked at the clock. It was 5:20 p.m.
Twenty minutes later, I was screaming. I am still not sure what the day's chain of events was. I just know that, as it turns out, when I started singing "Amazing Grace," I didn't have a mother any more.
And her last words to me were, "I want watermelon."
That night, Mom came to see me. I was sitting out in the living room, unable to sleep, crying still, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked, and there was a shadow. I felt a movement, a breeze, and then nothing. "Bye, Mom," I said. The next morning, each of my daughters said they felt someone hugging them all night. I am honored that, of all the people Mom could have come to see on her way out, she picked us.

My 10-year-old daughter now has the dress we bought on that last shopping trip. She looks great in it. She wears it to church, even though it's too big, and I let her. I defy anyone to say anything to me about it. Where once I was meek, now I find I am scrappy.
Tonight she asked me what my favorite age was.
"I sort of like being 36," I replied. "It's a whole lot better than being 35."
"I didn't like being 9," she told me tonight.
"Is it for the same reason I didn't like being 35?" I asked.
"Yeah."
And for my part, I obsessively wear the earrings that I got on that last shopping trip, as well as Mom's Star of David. Those earrings are the last thing my Mom will ever give me. I have lost them so many times -- they keep wanting to slide out of my ears, and they are so light I don't notice -- but each time, they turn up, like a miracle. I think Mom finds them and gives them back to me. Somewhere in the realm of the metaphysical, she is rolling her eyes and lecturing me for losing them, and whenever they turn up in the carpet I roll my eyes back and say, "OK, Mom. I said I was sorry." And then I tell her I love her, and when I get a chance, I tell her I love her again and again and again.