Mom, did you know you were dying?
I ask this question to the air. To my mom. To myself.
Did you know you were dying?
The doctor said you did. They said you knew, had known for months.
My mom passed away five months ago. She had been living with Ovarian Cancer. But she hadn’t. She had been dying from it.
The living with part - well that was what I believed. And what she told me. Not just me - what she told everyone. And it was what I wanted to believe. I couldn’t face the idea of my mother, so much a part of my life, dying. I couldn’t even grasp what that meant. How is someone who has always been there - just not there? It felt like too much to consider. It still does.
As a family we rarely spoke of mom not beating cancer. She wouldn’t, she wanted only to “be positive” and to “think positively.” Talking about dying was not either of those things. We didn’t know how to talk about death, we had been mercifully shielded from it, our only loss was our grandfather, and we were young and not expected to know how to process loss. We had always looked to mom to teach us how to interact emotionally with the world, she was the touchstone, the heart of the family. And she wouldn’t talk about it. So we didn’t.
We talked only of how great she was doing, how strong of a fighter she was, how she was God’s miracle for making it as far as she had. And then we talked about anything, and everything else.
Only once early on in her war with ovarian cancer, deep in battle with chemo coursing through her veins, did I pluck up the courage to ask her.
“Are you scared Mom?…Because I am.”
“No.”
“But...”
“Sharon, I’ve taught you everything I needed to teach you.”
And that was all she said. She wouldn’t, or couldn’t say any more. Except maybe “Now, let’s change the subject!”
Years later - I had all but forgotten the doctor’s assessment that 85% of women diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer at stage 3c died within 5 years. Instead I only saw my mother living, and in her words, being positive. Sure, she logged many hours on her couch, a victim of her feet numb with chemo driven nerve damage, but she was never idle. She was crocheting a blanket for a new baby, she was grading homework for her online classes, she was FaceTiming one of her six grandchildren. She had beaten breast cancer twenty years before, she was doing great. She wasn’t dying.
But she was. She just wouldn’t, or couldn’t say.
For the six months before she died, my mother had been battling persistent and terrible stomach pain. It would strike her after eating, and it was so painful it would cause her to take to her bed, a difficult concession for her. The recommended course of action - gallbladder removal surgery. Certain this would help, she underwent another painful operation, and difficult recovery. When I spoke to her post-op, she was her normal, cheerful, positive self. Happy it was over, excited for the promised but elusive pain relief. It never arrived.
That summer, my mom visited each of her children - in what now appears to be a goodbye tour. At each stop she explained her discomfort by saying that her stomach had not yet adjusted to her gallbladder removal surgery, and just needed more time. She lost weight, but confirmed she would be feeling better soon, and that she believed she may be able to reverse this course. She told us that she was experiencing gastritis. She told us that it was likely diverticulitis. It was a bowel obstruction. No, it was stomach paralysis. Being in the care of many GI doctors, and definitive about each different diagnosis, we fretfully, hopefully believed her, each time praying the cause of her pain would be proven not to be cancer. In a conversation with her where I expressed concern she stated, “I have had this stomach problem for two years and every CT scan I have had has shown nothing related to cancer in my stomach so don’t go down that road.”
As we each saw the changes in her, my siblings and I conferred over phone lines and through frantic text messages: She can’t be taking in enough calories - what is she actually eating? Why isn’t she getting better? What is going on? Worries that her cancer had progressed crept in at the edges of our conversation, wanting to be acknowledged.
Early September arrived, and with crippling stomach pain my mother was admitted to the hospital for further observation. Three days later, she died. Cancer, the true source of her stomach struggles, had done its worst. It had mutated and taken over her body. Having eaten very little for the last few months, she had no strength to fight, and no treatment options left to her. She also had no more reason to convince everyone she was okay. So she stopped trying, and then she died. We had only a precious few hours before the morphine worked its magic, detaching her from the terrible pain, physically and emotionally, and from the hospital, and from all of us. For me, and when I looked around – everyone else, that time was largely spent in a stunned, overwhelming, painfully slow, zombie-like absorption of what was happening.
When I initially arrived at the hospital, I believed – I hoped, I was just visiting for a few days with her until she was on the mend and resting at home. I wanted to surprise her, and as I entered her hospital room I tried to make her laugh saying “Did you call for a nurse?” My mom was awake, sitting up, and as always, so happy to see me. She had a scary looking tube pulling some scary looking stuff out of her stomach. She told me to ignore it. After kissing her hello on her cheek, I sat with her and held her hand. We chatted about this and that, my kids, the start of school, all of the normal things we always shared. She had yet to feel relief from the pain in her stomach, despite the promise of medicine. I determinedly hunted a nurse down and requested speedy delivery of pain relief.
It was my last hour of time with her that was innocent of grief.
In the days after she died, like a detective searching for fingerprints, I looked for evidence of her knowing. A note in a notebook with a list of to do’s 1. Checking acct, 2. Credit cards, 3. Car loan, 4. Gram’s acct. No description, but signs of a need to tidy up before it was too late. A book of letters to her grandkids purchased a decade ago, but written only in the last few months. I even called her oncologist, and pointedly asked, did she know?
Just weeks before my kids and I visited my parent’s house in Williamsburg, Virginia. Sadly, it was just for a day. Traffic heading back to NoVA, and to-do’s required we arrive early and leave early. That day my mom and dad gave me my birthday gift, six weeks early. When I asked why she brushed off the question and urged me to open it. Looking back, I remember thinking that my mom seemed overly happy to see me that day. I wonder if she wanted one more birthday with me, one more time to see me happy and free from the sadness she knew would soon become my constant companion.
When I think of my beloved mother, I thank God that she died knowing how much I loved her, how special she was to me, how I aspired to be the mom that she modeled. That alone was such a gift. She was so special, so full of love and light and magic, so rare. She saw the best in me. She believed I could do or be anything, and she wanted to be a part of my joy, my pain, all of it. In turn I was my most authentic self with her, as honest as I could be. And I loved that space.
So how could she keep this terrible secret from me?
It is only lately understood, if not answered. Time, rest, tears and a slow acceptance have given me the courage to ask this question of myself: Could I tell my own children if I knew I had to leave them forever? How could I face such a frightening prospect? When I see their innocent faces, their comfort in knowing I am there, in believing that I will always be there, how could I face taking that away from them? How could I cloak their remaining time with me in so much sadness? Just the thought of that unsettles me – I love them utterly and completely, just as my mom loved me. Instead, I think I would choose to preserve that time, – time with me alive, and us together, and life as we knew it with all of it’s small but wonderful details.
Mom, did you know you were dying?
It’s ok if you did, I think I understand. You kept your peace for me, for each of us, – and traded it for time.
The last day in August that I spent with my mom was an early and lasting birthday gift - we did what we always loved to do together, we grabbed a coffee and strolled around Target, browsing and chatting, as if we had all the time in the world.
Feb 20, 2020
