Two Weeks Notice

I don't like our nurse. It's not that she isn't good at what she does, and I am certainly grateful for all that she's helped us with, but every now and then...

"Sometimes, you know, people just have to put their lives on hold for a couple of weeks."

We were talking about end of July, when I'm scheduled to go back home--whether my mother has passed yet or not. It's a rigid date. Not because I have to get ready to go back to work or because I absolutely can not miss my ten year high school reunion, those are reasons but not the reason: it's rigid because I need it to be. Because I need an end. Because I need a point in time where I know I will be free (if only for a short while) from this place of death and dying. Because I need to know that even if she beats yet another timeline, even if she holds on for another month or another year, that at some point, my role in this will have ended.

It's someone else's turn to put their life on hold "for a couple of weeks"--mine has been on hold for three months.

No. That's not quite true. My life has been on hold for six years...

Ever since 2006 when I got the call: "Mom has cancer."

I wasn't expecting to hear those words as a newly minted teacher--twenty one years old and finally out on my own away from the oppressive influence of a woman who had been living vicariously through me. I was ready to make my own way and be my own person. I was ready to call weekly instead of nightly and to make decisions that she would shake her head at privately. But that single devastating call changed everything. There was to be no rebellious assertion of self, because suddenly, the world wasn't about me anymore. All prior disagreements, every complaint I'd ever had, everything she had ever done that I'd never had the chance to confront her about...it all had to be "water under the bridge", they said, because we didn't know how long she had.

Four years of remission--a time when I tried to get myself back on my feet. I took some hard blows on a failing job market and had to move back in with my parents for a time. Eventually, she went back to work. There were arguments, but I was still cautious, still shaken by the thought that it could come back. I helped where I could--she broke a leg, I nursed her back to health--I didn't say some of the things that occurred to me to say when my chest got tight and I wanted to scream. I didn't make big deals out of small things, I didn't push for space. I only stood my ground when I really needed to.

Then she started getting headaches. There was a new tumor. In her brain. Surgery followed. Treatment followed. Remission followed that. But...Dad lost his job and before I knew it, they were moving. Mom was still finishing her last rounds of chemo, Dad had to go on ahead without her so he could start the job that would bring the health insurance to pay for it. I cared for her. I stayed with her and the dog. I packed the house. I cleaned out the basement full of unwanted junk and black widows. I managed the property once they were both gone until it finally sold.

A year passed. I got my own place and started a small business--the first thing I had done completely for myself in several years--and things were going well. I was looking forward to this summer. I had plans. Plans to further my business and my career. Plans to casually hang out with friends for the first time in what felt like forever. Then I got another call. I don't remember all the words, but I remember a few: Tumors. Inoperable. Untreatable. Terminal.

I gave up my summer.

I don't regret that, and I don't resent it either. But I do resent being told, in not so many words, that it isn't enough. Who is a nurse to make that judgement? When will it be enough? When is it okay to want my father or brother to step in? To want professionals to step in? To want to go out into the world of the living and remember that I still live...

When can I finally take my life off hold?

When she dies.

That's the unspoken answer. The answer no one wants to give because it's unreasonable and they all know it is. Because the truth is, we don't know when that will be. It might be two weeks, two months, two years...we don't know.

The room got quiet afterward as the nurse quickly tried to come up with other options. There were nursing homes. Some free, some expensive. We could hire help to come in and tend her for part of the day. There were volunteers, neighbors, friends... but she kept looking at me, waiting for me to step in and pledge myself. She kept frowning like she couldn't believe I would consider any of those options. Like I was a horrible person for wanting to leave when it was just "a couple of weeks" extra.

My chest felt tight and my heart sank back into my core as if it could hide from the decision. My inner soul fluttered its wings against my ribcage in warning. My counselor's words came back to me "you have to take care of yourself, it will get to you". How could I take care of myself when I was trapped in a tiny space with an eternally dying woman? How could I take care of myself when everyone around me seemed to expect me not to?

I didn't say anything. My mother didn't say anything. But then, suddenly, my mother's body said something for her. She had a seizure right there in the living room during the meeting. And this time, it didn't just go away. That evening, she went from normal and fairly functional to a rapid progression toward death. This isn't the first time she's slipped, but my gut is telling me it may be the last.

And I feel...relief.

It's horrible. To feel that at a time like this.

 And I blame the nurse--right or wrong--because she was the one who closed the door on me and made me feel like my mother's death was my only salvation. Because she is the reason, that for a brief moment during that meeting, I looked forward to the death of this woman who I am supposed to love unconditionally. In some part of me I can't help but wonder if my mother's soul heard the panic brewing in mine and decided that enough was enough--that it was time to start packing up and leave.

Now my mother sleeps in the room next to me, trying to rest in between bouts of vomiting. She has occasional seizures that make her arms and face go numb and slur her speech. The pain comes in bursts despite medication--up and down the spine and in her head--and there is stronger pain medicine on order and emergency medication in the fridge to tide us over until then. But the pain isn't our only problem. Food and water are suddenly an issue. She can't take anything in and nothing is coming out despite laxatives given in every imaginable form. It's as if her digestive system has just shut down.


So they've given her a new timetable: she won't make it two weeks. Maybe less than one.

And because she's beat every time-table anyone has ever given her, I don't believe it just yet. Time will tell if she will beat this one too or if she is finally done with the race. And because I don't ever want to catch myself hoping for the latter again, I have decided: whether she dies or not, two weeks is when I am done with this race.

And I don't care what the nurse thinks of me for it.