I remember when my mother found a lump, but a lump doesn’t always mean cancer. A lump doesn’t always mean a round of chemo, three surgeries and a mastectomy. Some lumps mean exactly that. You keep moving, you swallow that lump and everything it means deep in your throat and you tell everyone she’s fine, you tell yourself she’s fine. You watch your mother sleep and lose hair and hide her pain and sadness and bite her tongue and swallow her lumps. Your stomach grows full of sorrow, sadness refluxing in the five minutes between English and Maths when you try and explain why you’re behind. Saying things out loud has such a bitter taste, a confirmation you’ve never admitted, never wanted to admit. Sometimes people with cancer die, you’ve got to be realistic about these things.
I don’t remember the reoccurrence clearly. Just the anger that came with it, just as her energy was restoring, just as her wigs were packed away it was back, some forgotten lymph nodes. Who had forgotten them? She fought and she swallowed more lumps and I hid 90 miles away in my university town and left the people in that world to deal with it. Selfish beliefs that cancer treatment is far easier for everyone if you don’t have to witness it.
Life without worrying about the death of a parent is one you only really appreciate in hindsight. When the cancer is yesterdays problem and you’re abroad, working 17 hours a day and drinking for 12 and kissing new boys in harbours at sunrise. On the drive home from the airport the familiarities surround you, In twenty minutes you’ll be home, through the archway of trees, past the the old graveyard, four bends in the road and one left turn and you’ll be outside that little cottage gate. But on the last bend another familiarity returns, the air thickens and there’s a hastiness in her speech and it has spread to her liver.
Realistic people aren’t really supposed to hope for miracles but god did I cry for the loss of my hope.
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
titsay
yousharknotpass
