Mom: March 2005 Archives
Two years ago today, my mother succumbed to her metastatic lung cancer that had been diagnosed six months earlier. I was fortunate in that I was set up at work to be able to take a leave of absence and essentially move back to Ohio to care for her those last six weeks. I look back on that time as a whole, especially those last six weeks, and realize how much of a blur it all is but thankfully, I was able to blog through it so I have some uncorrupted memories. I still look back at that time and in a strange way, for the sadness and loss that it was, it was also something so significant that it couldn't help but change who I was; in subtle ways but change none the less. I'm better because of it and I guess that is the silver lining on the whole thing.
Now we're two years out and I have to confess that this anniversary sort of crept up on me. I'm otherwise engaged and focused with work and school and vacation then all the sudden today was here. It wasn't a bad day and it wasn't even as particularly sad in the way that last year seemed to be. I miss her every day and especially in the last couple of days with my promotion, I really wanted her to be around to be excited for me. I know wherever she is (and she's everywhere) that she knows and I know she would have been excited for me but it is a pale shade of really having her here and hearing her on the phone as I told her what happened. But really, that's more about me and what I need which is sort of selfish, really.
It would be impossible for me to not draw some comparison between her death and the horrifically drawn out ordeal of the Terry Schiavo case. There was some headline a few days ago from her mother pleading, "Don't let my daughter die of thirst!!" which absolutely turned my stomach at the hyperbole and drama of this whole thing. It actually infuriated me that the dying of Terry Schiavo has been so overly-exploited and twisted. I thought of all those people being arrested for trying to sneak water to her and keep her alive under any circumstances and all for what? For God's will? The case is obviously much more complex then anything I can say here but ultimately, I think you just have to be a first-person witness to the dying to know what is and is not true and to know that sometimes the hardest choices to make are learning about one's own selfishness and how to overcome that to let go when the time has come.
For my family and myself, when Mom was diagnosed and quickly decided that she was going to turn down chemo and radiation, palliative treatments that would have possibly extended her life for a bit longer than six months, it was the hardest choice she ever had to make and one that was equally hard for our family to accept but I never once thought that my Mom had ever given up. She never once rolled over and let her impending death overcome her will to live. She did however recognize and embrace the idea that we all have our time to live and die and sometimes you just take the time left and make the best of it. It was something that even saying I admire doesn't do it justice by half.
