Endings and beginnings

 Hoooo boy.

Welp.

This is awkward.

More awkward than I thought it would be.

I find myself agreeing with almost everyone that as I get older, the time goes by more slowly each day, but seemingly much faster in the aggregate. 

I am still working part time, although with a nonprofit, not the government agency I was with for almost 8 years. So far, I am enjoying it, especially as I mostly work remotely.

My oldest graduated university in December. He has interned at the White House and done another internship with an unnamable three-letter government agency in DC.  However, with the changes that are coming in the federal government, he will most likely be walking a different path than the one he expected. I feel badly for him, for who could have predicted?

My youngest is in her first year of high school, which is crazy to type. She continues to be her kind, hilarious, empathetic self, and is a joy to everyone that knows her. 

My husband retired from his old job, where he had worked for 25 years, thanks to an unbearable boss.  His physical and mental health (as well as my mental health) were taking an immense toll, and he found a chance to jump ship a year or so ago, so he did. Not without a long period of adjustment and semi-depression, but he made it though and is now much much happier. As am I.

On Labor Day, September 3rd, 2024, my mother told us that she had been diagnosed with Stage IV liver cancer.  On Tuesday September 4th, my Dad drove her to the ER because she was in an enormous amount of pain. She was there until September 23rd, where she was released into home hospice. She passed away on September 26th. 

It was fast, brutal, and a huge shock to everyone. It was difficult to convey to the hospital staff that on August 22nd, let's say, she was a perfectly normal person, driving around, getting her hair cut, shopping. I think the last day she was able to get up and out of the hospital bed with the aid of a walker was September 13th. This was only to walk about five steps to a chair, where she would be able to sit up straight for perhaps 2 or 3 minutes, and then have to lay her upper body on a pillow-topped movable tray in exhaustion. 

My mother had been treated for breast cancer with a lumpectomy and radiation in 2016, and the treatment was considered successful. She dutifully went to her check ups and mammograms. She had a mammogram taken in mid-August, apparently they saw something. She was asked to come back for another imaging session on August 29th, and they discovered a tumor tucked behind one of her ribs and some masses in her liver. 

My mother was an R.N. for decades, went back to school, and got her Master's in Nursing at UCLA and remained an M.S.R.N for over a decade more. She hated every moment of being in the hospital, being weak, being dependent upon other people, being in pain. Despite having seen it happen to so many others for so many years, and most likely knowing the exact outcome. 

My mother and I had what I would term a difficult relationship. It sounds quite melodramatic, but my mother may have loved me, but she sure didn't like me. I was continually excluded in favor of my sister, who I guess she got along better with and who didn't have kids to complicate plans. And when I say excluded, I mean, vacations I was not invited to or invited at the very last minute, with the vacation already planned, and being unable to move things around with kids and a working husband, simply was unable to do anything but watch them go without me. She rarely babysat either of her grandchildren, rarely asked to do things with them. They were more of a holiday and occasion accessory. Not to say that she did nothing for them, but they were definitely not a priority.

At one point, on the advice of a mental health professional, I went no contact, with both her and my sister. I am sure she never forgave me. I am not really sure that I care. I had so much going on with my typical and non-typical kids, zero family support of any kind, the 2008 recession causing my husband loss of pay, and constantly being left behind produced no fucks to give after a while. No contact was actually very freeing.  My mother was a very critical person who would often play devil's advocate just because, even for fairly non-defensible things. "Well, maybe there is a good reason they killed all those puppies..." that sort of thing, which frankly drove everyone nuts.

In this fairly brief time after her death, I realized that my mother was literally incapable of being happy.  I don't know if it was her difficult upbringing, which saw her born into post-WWII Germany and migrating to the United States around five years old. I certainly heard stories from my grandfather when I was growing up about how he was forced to steal railroad ties to heat their home, placing my infant mother on top of the stove fireplace to keep her warm enough. Possibly in those dire circumstances she was born into, she lacked a vital something, whether it be nutrition or a certain amount of care and doting that most likely parents who are just trying to survive do not have the bandwidth to give. To an outsider, it would appear that my mother had everything anyone could have ever wanted.  A loving husband, financial stability and a home, two lovely and for the most part, successful daughters, a distinguished career in the medical field, two amazing grandkids, and more I am probably not even remembering. But nothing we could find was able put her in that transformative state of joy, it just did not seem to be in her DNA.  And to be honest, it was a relief to not be around that type of negativity and relentless judgement for a while, because of course, I always fell short. 

When she received her breast cancer diagnosis in 2016, my father asked to meet me for lunch for my birthday, and I should have known something was up.  He informed my of my mother's health, and said that he felt it would help her get better to see her grandchildren.  As I remember this, he didn't say "you and the grandkids" he just said "grandkids." The navigation on this issue was fairly straightforward, as I am not a monster, and there was no other alternative other than looking like a complete bitch. So we slowly integrated back in to things like birthdays and holidays, but really with only one foot in, as I had been burned before and had already built a complete life filled with people who cared about me. Not too much changed actually, they still were some of the most hands off grandparents I knew, and my children did not spend that much extra time with them. Things were never the same.  But that was fine with me, because things had sucked, and I had much more inner strength and self confidence than before. There is a certain calmness and resolve that comes when you acknowledge reality and your relative place in it, rather than trying to chase and yearn for the love and approval. My mother, father, and sister (and her husband) continued doing most things together, without me, and this time I was much better equipped to deal with it. 

When my mother entered the emergency room on September 4th, my Dad called my sister and I to let us know. At that point, we weren't really sure exactly what was going on, or when she would be released. I think we thought they would be able to give her some pain medication and she would continue on her journey of dealing with her metastatic cancer, but slowly and at home.  That was not to be. My sister is a teacher, and so on that afternoon after school was out, we spoke and concluded that one of us should probably go to the hospital, as both my parents had been there since the morning.  We both were available, but I told my sister that I thought it would bring my mom more comfort to have her there than me. Which was the absolute truth. It didn't hurt me to say it, and that was a good thing. 

The next few weeks saw me taking time off of work to be at the hospital with my Mom and Dad pretty much every day for 8 to 10 hours. I would get there in the morning and help my Dad navigate the terrible game of whack-a-mole that is the American hospital system. I know that my mother knew she was dying. As soon as she had heard about the liver masses, she knew that it was terminal. She just didn't know how brief her time left would be. Interestingly, or possibly predictably, my mother did not change during her stay.  If anything, she got a little meaner. She would roll her eyes when I came in to her hospital room. Was she upset that it was me and not my sister? Possibly.  My sister wanted to save her time off work until the very "end," so she normally would not come to the hospital until around 6 or 7pm, and some days she was too tired to do even that.  So my mom was stuck with me, like it or not. I never saw her be loving to my father in her last days, although maybe that happened when I left. She was angry, dying, and in pain, and still, nobody could ever do anything right. 

Trust me when I say I did everything I could to try and help my mother. I grilled nurses and doctors about their recommendations and decisions. I was constantly googling medications, treatments, studies, and terminology, talking to friends and relative who had gone through somewhat similar situations, seeking any and all insight into how to make things better if at all possible. I filed grievances, I spent hours on the phone trying to transfer her to a fairly famous cancer care center instead of what we saw as a ruthless healthcare system that was just kind of throwing in the towel. I recorded doctor conversations, I tried to get second opinions, I spun my wheels almost every day on something, trying to improve her quality of life or maybe even save it. Perhaps the writing was indeed already on the proverbial wall. We will never know if the course could have been changed. I engaged constantly with the staff to attempt to alleviate her pain, which was constant and increasing every day. The day before she entered hospice, which we had not made a decision on at all before that, I got there before my Dad, which was rare. My mother was in so much pain, she was convulsing. I thought possibly she was going to die in front of me right then and there, I didn't know how long she had been in this state. I grabbed her hand and assured her that I would help her. I ran out to the nurse's station and they were not even aware of what was happening, the staff was too overburdened and rarely checked up on her outside of their pre-scheduled visits. She of course had a button to alert staff, but she was unable to even use it. It took a very long time to get her out of that state, longer than was humane. It was a relentless, unforgiving game of catch-up that I don't think we ever won until she entered hospice. And even then, she was maybe still in pain but was under so much medication she just couldn't verbalize it. That fact will haunt me probably forever.  

My Dad did not want to put her into hospice. My mother, of course, did not make any end of life care directives, leaving us to make the agonizing decisions. The day that I came in to her in such agony, my Dad was wrestling with the hospice decision. He said that once they put her on the high dose of morphine, we would no longer be able to speak with her. I told him that the amount of pain that she was dealing with was no life for anyone. That it would be cruel to keep her in this constant battle that she was not going to win. She had been refusing to eat for basically the entire time she was in the hospital, which was of course her body using her energy reserves to keep her heart beating and lungs filled, but my Dad and my sister did not want to face that fact and kept trying to get her to eat. I knew better, but did not have the heart to tell them, joining them in entreating her to eat all her favorite foods we brought in to entice her. Which all failed miserably.

My Dad finally decided to place her into home hospice, as one of the things she had said from day one was that she wanted to go home. So to honor that wish, we did so. We had to fight some of the hospital staff, who didn't think she would survive the transfer. I told them her oxygen levels and heart rate were fairly steady, and that was good enough for us. They finally gave her enough morphine that she slipped into full unconsciousness. I still feel this was a blessing. I hope that the pain was not registering. She died three days after coming home, with my sister, me, and my Dad taking care of her. It was hard. It was probably the best thing. I am sure she would not have wanted to die in a hospital setting. 

My sister is having a tough time, apparently she cries most days still. She doesn't know that I know this, and she should probably seek therapy. This is not a judgement, I honestly think she should go to a support group to help her heal. My Dad seems to be ok, but he has always played his cards fairly close to the chest when it comes to my Mom. We plan on having my son move in with him during the weekdays, to help him around the house and to cook, as my Dad does not really know how. My Dad is 78 and dealing with his own diagnosis of prostate cancer, which he is in the end stages of treatment after a couple of years, and his prognosis is pretty positive as of this writing.

Life for me is different without my mother, and I know I am a terrible person when I say that it is definitely not worse. She was always this looming, negative presence in my life and the absence of it it is honestly weird. It is weird to not have this person in your life who our culture says should be this amazing, positive figure who you practically worship, but turned out to be someone very different and who at times, actively worked against me. I will never forget when I told her that we were pregnant with my son. We had actually only been married a couple months, we were not actively trying, and my husband was in law school at the time. It was unexpected, but we were thrilled. I bought some little infant socks and wrapped them up in a gift bag. We went to visit my parents (which was rare) and after some small talk, presented her  her with the bag. She opened it, stared at them, and said, "Does this mean what I think it means?  This is a terrible time for you to be pregnant." She went on to lament that my husband was in law school and we barely just got married, you get the picture. There was no heartwarming leaping up and hugging and crying for joy as we see on social media. She barely even said congratulations. She was a person of contradictions, who rarely gave up information, which we always joked would have made her the perfect CIA agent. When she passed away, my sister went through her contacts to call people who my mom had fairly recently been in communication with to let them know, and some people she had no idea who they were, and they had no idea my mom was even sick, much less dead. 

I do apologize to anyone who has made it this far. What I intended to be a short musing turned into a full-on trauma dump. But it did help me to write it. I cried at some points, which was nice. The only time I have cried over my mother since early September was the Friday after her death, she passed on a Thursday morning. I hadn't intended to cry, but as I was laying in bed trying to get to sleep, exhausted, these three specific images of her kept coming into my brain, and I sobbed violently for about twenty minutes. It was a release, and so was writing this. I am still navigating this new normal. But I think I am gong to be OK.