American Girl

She waits another week to fall apart...

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine

Sweet bloggy blog of goodness, where were you when I needed you?  Where was I when you needed me to sit here and pour my little heart out?  I am the opposite of a fair weather friend.  You don't hear much from me when things are copacetic.  It's not my fault, I thought things were pretty fine.

It wasn't as slow a change as it should have been, but I picked up on it when other people didn't.  My mom hasn't been "right".   There were a lot of little things that could have been brushed off, if they hadn't all started happening at the same time.  She started forgetting things.  Not little things like where the keys are, but big things, like inviting people to dinner, only to have have them take you by surprise when they knocked on your door with a bottle of wine expecting to be fed.  We laughed about it at first.  But it started getting worse, and I wondered if it was a side effect of her medication. 

When I tried to look into that, I found that she had just stopped taking it.  All of it.  The prescriptions had run out, and she just never bothered to fill them again.  This is abnormal.  My mom is not a woman who takes her health lightly, especially after all she has battled.  This is all very puzzling.

Talking about it with other family members only brought on frustration.  First my brothers said it was nothing, she was fine.  Everyone forgets things.  Everyone gets moody now and then.  I think it's possible, and it breaks my heart to even consider this, that I picked up on it more because I have been so busy, I haven't been making time to spend with my mom.  I went camping with the Girl Scouts as a kid, for one weekend, two stinking days, and I swear our cat doubled in size.  My dad happened to be out of town that same weekend, and we were both in agreement that the cat had gotten huge in two days.  Everyone else thought we were crazy, but a watched cat never grows, I guess.  A watched mom never starts going a little bit "off".  But she is.  Off.

And so, at my insistance, she made a doctor appointment.  I sent Ryan with her, since I was at my life sucking job.  The initial impression was early Alzheimer's, which was heartbreaking.  But there was hope that her odd behavior was a result of suddenly stopping her medications.  We were hopeful.  They sent her for some tests.

I've just realized that I've written this entire post our in the present tense, and I just can't go back and change it now.  My mom had a brain tumor.  The worst kind of cancer that took over so quickly that, even with treatment, she probably only had a few months.  If she became strong enough for treatment, which she didn't.  She just never  work up from surgery.

I'm stretching out the side of this bubble of comfy little numbness that I've been residing in, but I know it's about to burst and I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself  when it does.  I am aware of my own mortality, but when I pictured it in my head, my mom was always at my side, pushing chicken noodle soup on me, or something.  I have absolutely no idea how to go on without her.

The things that I can only tell my little blog of comfort are so ugly and selfish.  I keep wondering, if I hadn't said anything, and had just gone with the flow and ignored it, like everyone else seemed to have no problem doing, she would still be here.  She wouldn't be the same, but she would be here, and I would take it.  Anything, over this horrible gaping hole in my world.  And I know, or at least I think, that she wouldn't have wanted it that way.  She was prideful, and wouldn't have wanted it drawn out.  I want to tell myself that she made her choice, and she did and said what she had to before she went, dignified and beautiful, into whatever oblivion is out there.  She's the lucky one.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 14:29 | link | comments (17) |