Do you remember the movie Contact? If you don’t, this analogy may not make sense, but if you do I think it will. In the film, Jodie Foster’s character is selected to be the first passenger in The Machine, a multi-trillion dollar marvel of engineering delivered to humanity via our first contact with an alien intelligence. In this particular scene, The Machine is being powered up and Jodie’s character is in the pod, unsure of what will happen next. The Machine begins shaking violently, communications to her colleagues in mission control is garbled and she really doesn’t know what’s happening, yet somehow she manages to keep repeating “okay to go” over and over, unaware whether anyone can hear her on the other side of the mic. I have felt like this for the last week and a half. A few of my close friends know the reason why, and now I feel I must share more of what’s happening, since it will undoubtedly affect more than just this small group of people in my life.
My Mother has been suffering the effects of what she believed to be a mini-stroke for some time. Over the course of several weeks, she began to lose sensation in her left foot. Loss of sensation turned into loss of motor control, and soon the left leg was followed by the left arm. Finally, after falling and not being able to get up, she agreed to have an MRI on her brain, in order to provide a more detailed picture of what was going on with her in order to determine the best course of treatment. We had the MRI on Friday morning. I looked at the films and my heart sank. I felt like I was going to throw up, collapse, or both. There was a large white mass in the right hemisphere of her brain. We decided not to tell her or show her the films, but rather let her doctor read them on Monday. I spent the night on google and various research sites, hoping I was wrong in what I was thinking. Early Saturday morning, she began having spasms over the left side of her body. They began slowly and gradually increased in duration and severity. We decided that we had to take her to the hospital, since this was clearly escalating beyond what we were capable of understanding. After after hours of testing and conversations with several doctors, they had what they believed was a solid diagnosis. I was told she had stage 4 lung cancer that had spread into her brain and likely to the surrounding organs and tissue. It was at this exact moment that the world, my world, momentarily stopped spinning. “I’m sorry, but it’s very bad” he finished. “Are you sure?” I asked. He said yes and went on to explain that the x-rays showed a large tumor in her chest, while the MRI indeed showed four tumors in her brain, the largest of which about the size of a golf ball. Later in the morning, the oncologist came down and explained the different “treatment” options. He said that due to the advanced stage of the disease, it would require both radiation and chemotherapy, with the additional possibility of surgery on her brain to remove the largest tumor, but all of this was fairly moot, since her tiny body would not likely hold up to the abuse of the chemo and radiation. Even if it did, he said, all of this would only prolong the inevitable. I told him that my mother had always been against the idea of radiation and chemo and would likely refuse. He agreed and told me that the humanitarian thing to do was to keep her comfortable for as long as possible. So, on Saturday August 8th, I had to tell my Mother she was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I could barely get through it and after, just collapsed in the hallway outside her room. My Mother, my teacher, my best friend was going to die and there was nothing that I could do but watch it happen.
The rest of the day was spent in a sort of numb haze. My Mother was overcome with the news she had been given and was lost and confused, trying to make sense of it all. “Why am I being punished?”, she once asked. As the news settled in over much discussion and many tears, we decided that the best thing to do was to take the oncologist’s advice and keep her as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. The following Monday, we moved her into a hospice room in the hospital, where she would be kept warm and comfortable. Nobody knew for how long. The first course of action was to get her pain stabilized with a number of different medications. One for anxiety, one for pain, one to hopefully curb the swelling that was going on in her brain and one to inhibit the spasms that brought her here. For the next 10 days, Room 694 was to become my home away from home and my Father, my Stepmother and a host of friends, both mine and hers came to spend time with her while they could. The outpouring of love for my Mother was overwhelming. As strange as it may seem, in the midst of my almost paralyzing sadness was love. Love from not only the friends and family that came to see her, but love from hospital staff who, though they had experienced this scenario countless times before, were somehow more affected by the guest in Room 694. She thanked them for every kindness and made it a point to try to learn all of their names. I spent the week sitting with her, reading to her, holding her hand and telling her how loved she is. “It’s okay to go, Momma…”, I would repeat to her. “I’m so sorry I’m leaving you” she would whisper back through the tears. Selfless, even now. My Mother is a heart. She loves. Period. She is the most honest and compassionate person I have ever known and is simply too good for the likes of us. To that end, this morning, August 19, 2009, at about 5:45am, my Mother died. And though the most painful week of my life was watching her die, it cannot hold a candle to the brokenness and loss I feel in her absence. I got to spend 42 years with her, and though I am thankful, it simply was not enough. She was my best friend and I will not be the same without her. They tell me in time it will hurt less, and the waves of sadness will grow shorter and farther apart. They say that the memory of her will somehow fill the gap where her presence resided and that friends will become my new family. I’m sure some of that’s true, but for now I just feel like a light has gone out and I’m alone in the dark, lost and broken.
