Mom is Love: A Chronicle of 2020
Last year I wrote, “I welcome this new decade, like a new chapter, with open arms.” I want to repeat this phrase again, because I am not sure 2020 is the kind of year one opens their arms out and fully embraces. Mostly I embraced 2020 with my butt-cheeks planted firmly on my couch, or my home office chair, waaaaayyyy too much, but for the safety and health of the collective. However, there were certainly some BIG milestones that should be noted. To be upfront, the tragic part of this year has to do with my mom, and her slow, and then fast, decline due to cancer. Her health status colored my year, adding a melancholic shade of blue to the apocalyptical events, as if the pandemic eating away at our societies was mirrored in the cancerous tumors and cells eating away at my mom’s few remaining chances for hope and joy in 2021. This, then, is the chronicle of my 2020, which very soon became, and will henceforth be known as our chronicle: the ongoing story of the Nersisyan-Adams family.
January
A little over a week into 2020 and I got a kick in the butt from Ani while I'm in the kitchen making coffee: the pregnancy test came back positive. We had a little pickle in the oven.
reeling from the loss of my sister—
this new life kickstarts the cycle of life—
or is it a rollercoaster?
That same morning we successfully applied for a civil marriage at the Bucharest City Hall. Finally all our paperwork was in order. That night I started a Google Doc called “2020 Diary” written as a letter to my unborn child. I must say that sometimes weeks would blink by without an entry, but I am happy there is a record of 2020, in words. (This dispatch is not that Diary, despite its length, I swear.)
When the 17th came, I took a personal day off work, and Ani and I hopped into an Uber to the government building, for our 5-minute ceremony and 10-minute “reception” in a side room. Our two respective witnesses, Rita and Dasha, met us there, as well as our translator. Then, out of nowhere, Ani’s brother and sister-in-law showed up minutes before it was our turn. We stood before the official as they read off precisely what we were getting ourselves into, and the translator whispered the English version into our ears, and I remember precisely zero of those words, but I wholeheartedly agreed to it in spirit.
and so our union—
spied by family witnesses—
seals our everlasting
The following weekend, we spent our “mini” honeymoon at the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Bucharest. A room with a view, a pool on the top floor, and room service! Though Ani had morning sickness and I had a fever of 102 F, we had fun gazing out at the panoramic view of our adopted city.
Towards the end of this month one of my students, who is Chinese, starts attending school wearing an N95 mask. Questions arise. Amid all the discussion, I mention the few facts I think I know to be true: that this new virus circulating is no more deadly than the flu (false). This puts the kids at ease. Later, we learn that masks should be worn by people who may suspect they are, themselves, infected. My student, who took a lot of harassment along the lines of, “If you think the air’s not safe to breathe here, don’t come to school!” may have actually been trying to prevent us all from catching the virus. (He had spent the December break back in China, after all.)
the clues are all there for us to see
but sometimes illness has to be seen
to make us believe the screens
Nearly the last day of this month, my mom drops the bombshell: She is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She knew something was wrong for months, but didn’t go to the doctors. It doesn’t take long for Ani and I to cancel our planned wedding ceremony in Portugal, scheduled for late June. We wish to devote our energy and resources towards my mom’s health. Privately, we both are relieved at not having to keep planning this increasingly-complex destination wedding. Little did we know that this would be the first of many cancellations this year.
February
My mom went in for surgery early this month at OHSU hospital, in Portland, Oregon. “Dr. will save my life,” my mom wrote, via WhatsApp. The surgeon's plan was to cut out her ovaries, uterus, and the tumor, but once they got inside, it was too messy and dangerous to do much of anything. They needed to seal her back up, start chemo, and wait for the tumor to shrink a bit more. My mom was pissed that they opened her up for nothing, but relieved that she takes to the chemo well, and this regimen will go on for many months. In the meantime, I kept her updated on Ani’s pregnancy and due date. I wrote to her about our life in Romania. She wrote back:
I left my heart in Bucharest
Hope to come out
October
Meanwhile, five colleagues and I took a planned trip to Ethiopia for our February break. I was the de facto tour guide, since I spoke some Amharic and we were going to spend most of the time in Bonga, where I had served in the Peace Corps. We were going to do the Tourist Thing, in the place where I had once written would be manna from heaven to adventurous tourists. And, sure enough, our trip went well, and everyone got the culture shock treatment at least once in the brief time we were there.
The most memorable day there was a Monday, when we must’ve walked over 20km, visiting all my old haunts around the hilltop village, eating at Meron restaurant, reuniting with some old colleagues at the college campus, visiting its new library, and then, at 4:30pm, foolishly setting out on a hike through the coffee jungle to Shappa. Nevermind that the last time I did this hike we started in the morning, and had to frequently ask directions from locals, and it was a tough, sweaty trek. My plan was to call for a contract minivan to come pick us up in Shappa (or, barring that, walk back to Bonga). Well, we didn’t reach Shappa until 8pm, when it was already pitch dark, and most everyone was settling in for the night. When six white tourists come stumbling into your small village in the middle of nowhere, guided only by the lights on their smartphones, the rumors shall fly. And fly they did.
Are they spies?!
What are they doing here?!
How much did they say they would pay that contract driver?!
The town’s elder statesman, who happened to be the local geography teacher, gave us a stern lecture as we waited for the minivan, while a crowd of 30 to 40 locals looked on. When he asked, “Where is your guide?” My colleagues all pointed at me. It felt like betrayal, but it was technically true. Apparently we needed a special guide and permit to cross through the coffee tree jungle.
so much depends
on a white piece of paper
rubber stamped in purple ink
When the minivan showed up, it was a confused pandemonium, and emotions ran high. Turns out the villagers were concerned these guys in the van might rob us, or have conspired to rob us. Bad things happen on the roads at night, or so I’ve been told. In any case, we did indeed make it safely back to our guesthouse by about 9:30pm, and we ate a dinner of granola bars and beer (because they have a bar but no restaurant at the guesthouse, naturally). We all went around the circle and spoke about one regret we had from that day. Of course, looking back, I don’t have any regrets. Hiking through the verdant green hills of Kafa in the golden hour, and then under a blanket of stars, is a memory I’ll cherish forever.
The week we return to school from February break is when the outbreaks start in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. My flight path transited through Rome airport. Had we transferred in Milan, we would have had to quarantine for two weeks, and several of my students had to do as much.
March
Ani flies to Russia for a cousin’s wedding ceremony. I cannot attend because of complications to do with renewing my passport in January, traveling to Ethiopia in February, and the fact that Russia wanted to hold onto my passport for three weeks. I simply could not abide by that. While she’s in Russia, the world starts to slam its doors shut to keep the coronavirus out. She’s only gone a week; when she left we didn’t have any concerns; by the time she returns I’m thanking our lucky stars she is back home. A week after she returns, my school closes and moves to online instruction.
there is a moment
while sitting on the couch
eyes out my window
a slow panic crawls
up my spine, this thing becomes
real: a pandemic.
April-May-June
I think I spend the entirety of these three months staring out at the world through screens, be it my Zoom classes, or doomscrolling through the news, or likely trying, in vain, to get a refund or credit for canceled flights and hotel bookings. But, the one thing Romania’s lockdown had going for it was that, even though the parks were closed, we could all go out for a walk “for exercise,” though you just had to write yourself a note, and sign and date it, and have it on your person. And so these evening walks around our neighborhood became almost like a ritual cleansing from the screens of the day. In a way, the pandemic forced us to spend quality time with each other simply enjoying the calm before the storm of our upcoming parenthood.
Oh, and one more milestone for June: I paid off my final student loans! And became officially debt-free. (I wrote a 15-page essay on this lengthy process, and I’ll post it eventually, but the moral of my story is:
if you want to get out of debt
or live debt-free, the first step
is to move out of the United States.)
July
I had bought a ticket to the United States for this month way back at the start of February. My plan was to spend time with my mom in Oregon. But then the U.S. fumbled the ball on the pandemic, and it was getting even worse in summer, not better. I kept going back and forth. The risks versus rewards. In the end, having a wife who was within two months of her due date made the decision for me. I could not risk somehow being locked out of Romania when I had a wife who could go into labor at any moment. My mom pointed this out to me, and said, “Don’t come. Don’t risk it.” So I didn’t.
Instead, while Ani finished up her last few weeks at work before her summer leave kicked in, I took a week-long road trip with a few colleagues to Croatia. And that was glorious, mainly because Croatia was empty, and it is never empty. I got my soul’s fill of snorkeling, stand-up paddleboarding, stargazing, sun-soaking, and open-water rock climbing on the blue dream of the Adriatic Sea.
When I returned, Ani and I spent a week on the Black Sea. Our first night we pitched our tent in the wild dunes. Before you picture a romantic camp, note that we got the last remaining patch of dune that wasn’t already claimed by the wild camping masses. (The pandemic really made domestic travel in Romania more crowded than ever!) Even so, if we squinted, it felt wild. The wind was whipping so hard, we heard not a soul. The rest of the week we stayed at an Airbnb close to the beach resorts with their sun loungers. Now that was a vacation.
Also this month, my mom had her 2nd surgery attempt. It was another failure, as the “mess” did not get much better. Turns out my mom is platinum-resistant; meaning standard Carbo-Taxol chemo will not work for her; meaning there would be no way to make this cancer go away completely. One doctor’s opinion was that she had 3-6 months to live (I only learned about this information in December). Her main doctor, ever the optimist, swatted that idea away, and gave her several options, none of which included hospice. The doctor highly recommends 2 of the 6 options (really too many!) but my mom goes with another treatment — Doxil — for the simple reason that it’s one thing, not a combination of things. She begins this treatment in August, and it seems to have heavier side effects than standard chemo.
mom is the unluckiest cancer patient
in the world: nothing works
and the most rare events
seem to always happen
August
Before I have to go back to work, I take one last journey this summer. I hop a night train to a large town in the mountainous far west Romania, then a taxi up to a trailhead, and then schlep up a ridgeline in the Parang Mountains. I camp next to a small, spring-fed lake in the shadow of a lesser peak. It’s called Miju Lake, hidden away on a spur trail, and it is now part of my spirit atlas. Sure, there are a few day-trippers who stop by the lake, splash around, eat their lunch, and then leave. Otherwise I have the lake to myself.
when the surface of the lake ripples
who are you seeing: the water or the wind
why must we climb the mountain
when there is serenity by the lake
For two nights and three days I get to watch the ripples on the surface of the lake, and the hues of blue-green shift with the rising and the setting of the sun. I do spend a few hours on a day-hike to the 2nd highest peak in Romania (mostly to avoid the bulk of the day-hikers to Miju Lake) but otherwise spend my time reading poetry, thinking the thoughts, soaking the legs in the ice-cold water, and meditating on a rock overlooking the valley where the water from the lake cascades down the mountain.
if the whole world is alive
why aren’t rocks alive
One morning, I woke to the sound of rockfall. Thinking it could be a brown bear, I poked my head out of my tent, but found only a pack of chamois, the stout mountain goats of Europe, crossing the scree field.
one thinks one is alone
sitting beside a lake in the sun—
and then the wind blows
The new school year begins online, in distance learning mode. I will teach English and Humanities to the grade 8s this year. Energized by this situation, I whip together a unit called “Who Rules Over Whom?” with a study of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as well as excerpts from Aime Cesaire’s post-colonial retelling, A Tempest. This unit is paired, in Humanities class, with our history unit on the Age of Exploration and Rise of Colonization. I have many goals, though the primary one is for students to find an appreciation for Shakespeare, or for reading plays, at least, even if they do not understand the words quite yet.
While I was birthing this new unit of study, Ani prepared all August to give birth to our daughter: Mira Nehalem. And then, at the end of August, she did. On a Friday morning she hopped an Uber for the 8-minute ride to the private hospital. (I wasn’t going to be let through the doors, so there was no point in my going, and don’t worry, she wasn’t in labor.) I stayed home and taught my morning classes. In between two classes, I checked my phone, and there was a simple message from Ani: “We’re done” (and a photo of Mira sleeping in the bassinet next to her bed). Tears come on suddenly, tears of joy. It’s indescribable. When my next class starts, I announce the birth to my students.
a student notices:
Mira is like the start of Miranda—
was that intentional?
no, I swear, merely coincidence
though deep down I think of Prospero
protecting his daughter
and the coincidence may be intent.
In Romania, due to COVID restrictions, mothers are allowed exactly ZERO visitors while they are giving birth and recovering from giving birth. Thus, I must wait all of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning to see my girls. Thankfully, a friend invites me along on a bike tour of some wineries that weekend, to take my mind and heart off of things. Still, Ani sends videos periodically that feel unreal. I forward these to my mom, and she wakes up to Mira videos, ever grateful for this lovely way to start her day.
September
The days blur together. I took one week of paternity leave that first week home with Mira. (I will spread out my allotted three weeks across the next four months.) When we get Mira home, I hold her in my arms and I can’t stop gazing intently at her face. I don’t know what to make of it, other than that this is what needs to happen for us to bond. Perhaps new fathers (and new mothers) need this psychic exchange to help code our brains in preparation for parenthood. This person, the code seems to inscribe, is your person. Remember her face. Remember what she looks like in case she ever gets lost in a crowd. You are now responsible for her. (Zap Zap Zap)
There really is a strong before and after feeling, that your life simply cannot go on as it once did. I notice that beer and wine are quicker to give me headaches, as if my body is telling me: Don’t you dare get drunk when you’ve got a baby to take care of! I notice that my fear of holding a fragile baby soon transforms into an ability to twist, turn, spin, rotate, or flip the baby into whatever position we need her to be in. I also notice that if I hold her just so, and bounce on a fitness ball, she calms down immediately, and usually will fall asleep.
I am turning into an X-Man.
A mutant.
A father.
October
In early October my niece gave birth to her son on the same day as her own birthday. My mom flew down to San Diego to be with her on this special occasion, but was suffering from vertigo throughout her time there, and had to lay down most of the time. She got checked out at a clinic, though it was inconclusive. My mom believed this was one of many side effects from Doxil, the chemo drug she was taking. (Later we would look back and see that this was actually the start of the cancer’s spread to other parts of her body, in particular, her brain.)
For October break, my family and I hit the road to Transylvania, to see the fall foliage in the mountains. On the way, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant for pizza. Just after pulling out of the restaurant, we hit a road hazard, bending two rims and flattening one tire. It was so bad we needed to call for a mechanic to help us, roadside, but had to wait 45 minutes on the side of a busy highway. The mechanic arrived, helped us fix our tires, and we were on our way. Mira slept through all of this, and nearly made it to our final destination two hours later before opening up in a scream/cry. We needed to pull over and feed her immediately.
at every instinct to go off
do my own thing, I stop
and think: with my family
November
This is the month when my school’s month-and-a-half-long experiment in holding classes on-campus comes to an end for the year. First, know that my school was doing its utmost to ensure that nobody transmitted so much as a playful laugh or high-five between each other, much less the coronavirus. I, along with the grades 8-12, came onto campus in the afternoons, from 1pm-4pm, and students remained in their pods of 10 while teachers rotated frantically between classrooms, teaching four classes back-to-back with no breaks. Once we arrived for class, we needed to set up not one, but two classrooms, as our 20-student classes were divided into two rooms. Not only that, but we also had to somehow virtually include our students who were still stuck in China, Turkey, or Colombia—or just preferred to learn from home—or woke up that day with a sniffle and didn’t want to risk coming to school. Needless to say, while it was so great to see the eyes of students again, briefly, before they darted back to their laptop screens, it just did not satisfy the teacher’s soul.
it becomes quite clear that the only way
students know how to be, in the pandemic,
is not to be at all, just do do do
When the school recorded three cases of COVID-19 in high school students (all were infected off-campus, allegedly) we shut down the Secondary and went online. (A few days later, all schools in Romania were closed again, through the winter holidays, due to exponential growth in case numbers.) I have to say: I was relieved to go back to distance learning, if only because I had greater control over the experience, and could even conduct better, more focused 1:1 conferencing with students. The extra time with my family played a role, too, and hanging with Mira for small moments throughout the day was priceless.
In early November, we received the news from my mom that the radiologists noticed some interesting spots in her brain scan, conducted after she complained about dizziness during her 3rd round of Doxil, which was halted midway through. Her doctor freaked her out by saying “brain tumors” and “internal bleeding,” even though the findings were inconclusive, and they ordered another MRI for early December, to see if the spots grew in size. Nevertheless, I broke down, a bawling baby myself, sensing the end was near.
it was like hearing the news
about the ovarian tumor
all over again
My mom was experiencing some bizarre neurological symptoms, including dizziness, double vision, and extreme drowsiness, and no matter what the verdict with the brain scans, her health was deteriorating, something bad was going on. She had stopped her treatment, and the doctors were not taking any action other than ordering one more MRI. For a brief moment, I considered flying home for Thanksgiving weekend, but when I called, she talked me out of it. “Don’t come,” she kept saying. “You’ll get the virus.” Promise me, then, I said, that we’ll strive to have more frequent video calls. “I feel real distant from everyone out here in Romania,” I wrote. “I feel distant too,” my mom wrote back.
i was waiting for America
to gets its act together
but viruses and tumors don’t wait
December
My brother and his family visited my mom for Thanksgiving. Yes, it was risky, even with all the precautions and medical-grade masks and eye protection they wore on the airplane. And yes, I stayed home, and called them on Zoom. Caught them just after they had finished Thanksgiving desserts. I had Mira on my lap, and sure enough she looked up at the faces on the screen for at least 45 minutes before getting tired of it. She probably won’t remember seeing all these faces, including her grandma and grandpa, saying silly things at her. But I recorded the whole thing, and I’ll show her the video when she’s older.
My brother reported that our mom was still a bit wobbly, still a little dizzy, had trouble seeing, had to close one eye, but that surprisingly she was pretty much “all there” mentally and verbally. He said he could have a “normal” conversation with her. This was all to say, to us, the other brothers and our niece, to get out there to see mom while we could. While she’s still coherent.
Just a little over one week later and my mom developed more symptoms, such as headaches and vomiting, and worsening symptoms overall. The second MRI revealed that she did not have brain tumors, at least not the growing kind they were expecting. So then, what were all these symptoms telling us? OHSU was not really taking any action on the case, and my mom is not someone who presses for information, preferring avoidance than a sad conversation. But my brothers and I wanted the doctors to know our concerns. So we logged in to her online chart, and sent direct messages to OHSU explaining her progressing symptoms, and the negligent fact that no treatment has been offered to their patient since mid-October, when they abruptly stopped the Doxil after my mom complained of dizziness.
a global pandemic
could no longer stand
between a son and his mother
I made a Zoom call to my dad on a Saturday. I told him I was planning on flying out. My mom must have overheard us talking, because she was adamant: “Tell him not to come!” I could hear her in the background. “Don’t come!” But she was in too much pain and discomfort to talk to me directly on Zoom. I slept on it. The next day I activated my open ticket with Turkish Airlines (the one I still had, unused, from the past summer) and rebooked for December 13th through the 22nd. I did not tell my mom until later that week. All she said was, “No way. How are you getting from airport?”
I was able to travel so early in December because I used my final week of paternity leave, moved to blend in with our winter break. While my colleagues and my students wrapped up that final week of school for 2020, I was in for one of the most harrowing journeys of my life, second only to the previous December’s flight to Chicago for my sister’s funeral.
On the flights to the U.S., contrary to what I had envisioned, nearly all of the seats were full. I wore a series of three KN95 masks with a plastic face visor for nearly the entire 26-hour trip from Bucharest to Istanbul to San Francisco to Portland. I waited for nearly everyone around me to finish eating their meal, put their masks back on, before I dug into mine. I only used the bathroom once on the 13-hour flight from Istanbul to San Francisco. All in all, I did what I could. Still, I was kicking myself, telling myself I was so very foolish to think this was a good idea.
once i saw my mom
and the condition she was in
it was the best idea i had
I could write a whole book about the nine days I spent in the U.S., but I’ll spare some of the details for now, though this will still run long.
All I’ll say is that I did not step into a single grocery store in the U.S. The only places I went inside were my parent’s house, Marsh’s Free Museum (a novelty store), the Inn at Northrup Station (hotel in Portland), and OHSU hospital. That’s it. The majority of my time was spent at OHSU’s Adult Oncology floor, sitting in my mom’s in-patient room, tending to her, caring for her, advocating for her, and relaying information out to family and friends. Her COVID test came back negative, so I breathed some relief that I had not unknowingly passed it to her, at least in those first few days.
The trip to Marsh’s Free Museum was my mom’s idea. I arrived late on a Sunday night, and she would be admitted to the hospital on Tuesday afternoon. In the meantime, on Monday, even though she was weak and spent most of the time with her eyes closed, laying down, or reclining in a chair, she wanted to do some Christmas shopping up in Long Beach, a 40-minute drive on the Washington coast. So we all piled into my rental car: my mom, dad, and brother, Ethan. At Marsh’s I held my mom by the arm to keep her balanced, and she used her other hand to steady herself against the shelves. This is a disaster, I thought. She should be in the hospital tonight! Still, she selected some fine colored starfish skeletons for her grand-daughter, Mari, and a ship in a bottle for her grand-son, Mateo.
but lo, who knew this would be
mom’s last ride to the beach, to see Jake
the alligator man, to eat a maple bar,
and watch her husband and sons
walk to the ocean and back
across the wet sand
The morning of the day she was admitted to the hospital, I was sitting down to a cup of coffee and a bowl of granola, when my mom was walking back from the bathroom. She had one hand on the walls, as per usual, but this time she stopped and then slumped against the wall. I jumped up and grabbed her by the arm, to assist her to her day-bed in the living room, thinking she was just dizzy. But by the time we got to the bed, she could not use any of her strength to get up onto it. She slumped down, legs giving out under her, and I called out to my dad for help. Both of us wrangled her into the recliner, and she recovered quickly. (Later we would identify these as seizures.) “This is why I need you to come with me to the hospital today,” I told my dad. “What if this happens on the side of the road?” It was a two hour drive to OHSU, and surely there would be a need for a smoke break or bathroom stop. In the end, since only one of us could accompany her into the hospital, my dad drove his van behind us all the way to Portland. Once we got settled in her room, he drove the two hours home, to wait for my news.
The only way I can make this scenario less tragic is to say, at least my mom did not succumb to COVID-19, isolated from everyone, a phone held up to her face, while she sat mute, breathing with a ventilator. Instead, she was well cared for at OHSU, and while visitors had to adhere to special rules, she would not face her final weeks alone. I could stay by her side through her first five days there, when we were still hopeful that the experts could clear up her symptoms, and then get her back to the status quo on her ovarian cancer. At one point, that first night in the hospital, on the way to a CT Scan, my mom asked, out of the blue, “Will I ever see you again once you go back to Romania, Charlie?”
i stuttered out a yes,
bit down on my tongue
uttered: just make it to summer
I won’t go into too many details here, the twists and turns of diagnoses and prognosis. Except to say that at one point the doctors had to do a lumbar puncture (aka spinal tap) to test the cerebral-spinal-fluid (CSF) and its pressure, as well as to extract extra fluid. And they did the procedure right there in her room, as she sat on the edge of her bed, hunched over a tray table. I held her hands, squeezing them as she ooh’d and ahh’d at the scratch and pokes of that terribly unnerving procedure. But then, afterwards, my mom slept a most peaceful sleep for two hours. No pain, just slumber. Then she woke up and was hungry, wide awake, and wanted a shower. Four hours later the fluid had refilled, and she was back in pain, muted, and sleeping.
By day four the nurses were telling me that I should take more breaks. Hinting that maybe I should sleep in the Family Room for overnight visitors. Get well rested, they said, so you can be 100 percent during the day, when you are needed. But I also knew, in the back of my mind, that mom was right; I would not be returning from Romania anytime soon, and she was not likely leaving this hospital anytime soon, either. She seemed to get ever so slightly, progressively worse with each passing day. It’s difficult to say whether she got weak because of an extended hospital stay or it was the multiple cancers taking over her body. Probably both.
A close friend of mine, speaking from experience watching his own parents pass away slowly in a hospital room, gave me some sage advice: “Now, being in the room with her is the greatest gift you can give her. Your presence will give her strength. Though it may differ from one person to another, I never felt the need to have, for lack of a better phrase, ‘cinematic conversations’. Just sitting there, being there, being an advocate when necessary, that was it. And, it was enough.” And it was, truly, enough. Even so...
My brother flew out from Colorado for the weekend, taking over for me as mom’s advocate, though he did not catch her at a good time, and did not have any “normal” conversations with her. (Later he was able to call her on the phone and have that much-needed conversation.) When my brother had to fly home, my dad took over for us, as I drove back to Astoria to collect my suitcases. I also got to meet my niece’s infant son for the first time, as she and her husband had driven up from California, part of a temporary move to be closer to her grandma, for caretaking purposes. My niece had lost her mother, my sister, the previous December, and now she was losing her grandma.
we were in a cruel cycle of life
and death, trying desperately
to shift into something new
When I returned to Portland the next day, the night before my flight back to Romania, I stopped in for one last visit. My mom was doing much better, now that they prescribed her steroids to fight the inflammation in her head. She was talking on the phone. She opened up my family’s Christmas gifts to her. She was asking for a shower. The nurses equivocated about the shower (as it would require three nurses, likely) but helped set her up for a good tooth brushing and mouthwash rinse, while I held her spit bowl for her.
pay attention to the ritual
of brushing her teeth—
five solid minutes of cleansing
When the nurse asked her where she was, she said, “Loyola? Maywood?” This hospital and this place she spoke of are both in the Greater Chicago metropolitan area. They are likely where mom’s mother, my grandmother, was taken to treat her bout of cancer, and where she passed away in 2005. Mom was adrift in time and space. She only knew it was December, and that her son, Charlie, was also in the room, who would do anything for her that she asked.
She then asked me to rub Salonpas lidocaine on her legs, as her legs were painful—had been painful for several months—and I did so. Finally, after she had ordered pureed chicken noodle soup for dinner, there was a lull in the action, and the CNA was busy typing something on the computer in the corner. My mom was looking at her phone. She could only really focus on her phone or the TV screen in those days, and I realized, then, just how much she had been affected by the pandemic social isolation, too.
I kissed her on the forehead and told her I was flying home the next day, that I had to say goodbye, that I would not see her again this trip. She said OK, and I could see her eyes were watering. Not crying, as she could not cry, even though earlier she said she “wished she could.” But deep down inside, I believe, she knew she would never see me again. Then she immediately grabbed my hands, closed her eyes, and launched into a prayer. My mom had not been too verbose the past few days, as the cancer was likely causing aphasia—or the inability to produce verbal language—but the words just flowed out of mom’s soul that evening. She prayed for at least five minutes, as if she were speaking directly with God, or as if God was speaking directly through her.
she used to want me to pray with her
when i was young, though time
and space had torn this tradition in two
time had collapsed
& mom was with grandma
& i was eternally present with my mom
What do we need to feel closure? What secret code words need to be said in order to find peace? Back in college, in the early 2000s, I wrote a short story entitled, “Proper Partings,” and the main character, a father in his early 50s, is struggling to mourn over his wife, who has just passed away to ovarian cancer. He is on a short vacation in Venice, as per a recommendation by his son, and is seeing his wife appear as an apparition amongst the crowds. The main theme of the story comes across towards the end, with the line: “There is no such thing as a proper parting.” I still hold that to be true, as it cuts us all some slack. We don’t know, with 100 percent certainty, that it is truly a final farewell. Indeed, over the course of a few days, I had several false goodbyes. No goodbye is perfect. However, my mom saying a prayer with me, a prayer for peace and hope, comes close.
now that i know what cancer truly looks like
i must go back and rewrite
my entire story
I am now back in Bucharest. It is a few days after the New Year. I made it back all safe and sound, spent my Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my wife and daughter in quarantine, and my recent COVID test came back negative. I have been staying in touch with my dad, my brothers, and my niece, as they stay by my mom’s side, knowing each day may be her last. She is still on the same floor at OHSU, in the same room I left her, in the same bed, and now the goal is pain relief and comfort for her end-of-life care. Doctors drain some fluid from her brain every other day and she perks up a bit, eats a few bites of cheesecake or yogurt, takes a few sips of Gatorade, and makes subtle facial and hand gestures to show that she’s still in there, somewhere deep inside, but just can’t form the words. She can’t type on her phone anymore, either. The last few messages she sends to our family chat are GIFs and emojis.
poetry was a special language
between mom and i
blue heart emoji
As I left my mom’s room that night, a few days before Christmas, she said, “Love you, Charlie.” I love you, too, I said. “Merry Christmas,” she said. Merry Christmas, I said, walking out the door. As I drove to my hotel that night, the following mantra played on a loop in my head, getting louder and louder, until I believed it wholeheartedly, with all my soul:
No fear.
Mom is God.
God is Love.
Mom is Love.
No fear.
Mom is God.
God is Love.
Mom is Love.
No fear.
Mom is God.
God is Love.
Mom is Love.