 I took my mom to the hospital this morning.
It’s a familiar drive, one we’ve become accustomed to over the past year. We talk about the family, my dad, her doctor. We talk about how far she’s come, and how acupuncture has been pivotal in supporting her through the intensity of modern medicine. We talk about me opening a practice again someday. She says I can make a difference. I do not ask her if she is scared. It is not a question worth answering. Since the diagnosis last year -- Stage 4 Undifferentiated Pleomorphic Sarcoma -- her 77 year old body has endured two major surgeries, six weeks of radiation, six rounds of chemotherapy, experimental immunotherapy, multiple biopsies, and countless blood draws, CT scans, and MRIs. Today is what we hope will be the third and final surgery to remove a large mass in her right thigh, a mass that materialized five months ago out of nothingness, ghost cells that played silently on a seemingly clear MRI before building a spiral around her nerves and vessels. We can be thankful, at least, that they decided to say hello. To give her a chance to fight.  Last week, a woman I’d never met before came to my house, full of curiosity and wonder and pain. She was on a journey diving through other women’s stories, women who were mothers, women who were humbled and emboldened and exhausted and healing, and burning with truth. She was there with me to learn something, to spark something, to heal something -- to create a platform for mothers to share and to connect through our collective courage and vulnerability.
As I told her my story, of George and our love and my visions and his leaving, I was reminded. I was reminded of the grief and the suffering, the resistance and the surrender. I was reminded that there was a time when communities could come together to lift up the wounded. I was reminded that once upon a time, I was terrified of being a single mother, and I longed for an escape, but I stayed. I was reminded that there are many ways of escaping. That we can force our physical form to remain in place while our minds wander and our hearts flee. Today marks the sixth anniversary of your passing, though it feels strangely similar to the first. Your daughter and me, alone at home, the world around us forever changed. The grief in this sixth year is palpable, encompassing, wrenching -- and for once, it is not about you. You, instead, are the foundation I lean upon when life becomes unsteady. You are the faith I have that everything will be okay.
I won’t bore you with the details. You already know that the coronavirus has all but halted our lives, that my acupuncture practice closed its doors mere weeks after opening, that schools are closed and play dates are cancelled, and we see none of this letting up anytime soon. You know that my mother was diagnosed with stage four sarcoma in May, that we have been caring for her through scans and surgeries and treatments, all the while terrified of exposing her and my dad to this novel virus that has taken over half a million lives. You know that the violence and inequities placed upon our brothers and sisters of color continue to plague us, that a country founded on racist ideology cannot change without a disproportionate amount of suffering, bloodshed, and tears, that the road ahead is marred with adversity. You know that the collective grief in our world at present is more than most of us have ever been asked to endure. You know that we are hitting a tipping point. Something is about to shift. I woke this morning to Nova, climbing into my arms to snuggle, as she does most mornings. Tony stirred soon after, and we lay there, the three of us together, resting contentedly with our arms intertwined.
“Are you awake?” I asked Nova. “Yes, I’m awake,” she replied, her crisp yet delicate five-year old voice slicing through the morning air. I kissed her head, squeezed her a little tighter. One at a time, we rose from the bed. Tony headed downstairs to make breakfast and coffee, as he does most mornings. Nova picked out a dress her daddy might like. “He liked red, didn’t he mama?” “Oh yes, he loved all the colors.”  It is September already. Somehow, we survived the summer. 11 weeks of cramming, racing, barreling through -- the result of me being in school full-time while Nova was out for the summer -- nearly did me in. Thank goodness for Moms, and Tonys, and Aunties, without whom I could not have succeeded. One summer down, one more to go.
It’s taken me the entire past month to decompress, to find a new calm. But just this week I caught myself singing a tune in the car on the way to class, tapping to the beat while waiting for the light to change. It’s amazing how these little things can bring joy in the most mundane of moments. I delighted at my ability to sing again, to feel music in my body, to feel joy without cause. This in stark contrast to the hyper-focused, muscles-clenched, don’t-let-things-fall-apart mentality that I adopted to survive the summer. It wasn’t by choice (necessarily), but it was my default. I kept dreaming of ways to do things differently, to be differently, but my patterns got the best of me. Do, Achieve, Work, Stress, Push, Worry, Repeat. |
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