Major TWs for cancer, death, graphic body functions, suicidal ideation, abortion.
It’s 4am and I’m trying not to wake up my husband as I cry about Kathleen.
I sleep with a maternity pillow, a pillow cube, and a standard pillow so I can get as cozy as I want without fucking up my shoulder, and it’s kinda like sleeping on those $250 wedge pillows with the arm cavity for side sleepers. My husband and I usually sleep with our backs to each other. I have this dumb fear of falling off my bed if I lay with my back to the floor and try to roll over, so when I face my husband’s side of the bed to spoon him, I usually turn over before I fall asleep.
And I sat here for a moment, thinking about reaching over to put my arm around his chest and pull him close to me. And then it was like it was late June again, and I was laying next to my best friend’s mom in her bed as she lay dying from cancer. Hugging her for the second time in 15 years, and knowing it would be the last, and sobbing as she held my hand over her chest. Her exhausted body, turned away from me because she needed to be on her side, hair drenched in sweat. I laid there, watching mom rest. Watching the way her hand grabbed the hand rail she used to pull herself up in bed. The soft glow of the lights. The shelves overflowing with enough medical supplies to stock an ambulance. The table with all of her prescriptions. The walls my bestie painted to keep herself busy when mom went in for her final surgery where they concluded the cancer had spread too far to bother trying to remove it all. The tubing for her oxygen. The painting I gave her on Mother’s Day. The sounds of the audio loop of songbirds chirping that played in the background often. The IV bags full of saline, the boxes full of flushes and caps, and the blue vomit bag on her bed nearby, since she couldn’t keep anything down anymore. The orchid that had slowly been dying with her for the past several weeks. The digital painting of mom with her grandson. We talked about a lot of things, and I got to express my appreciation of what a great example she is for me to look up to as a mother, and specific situations I could recall where I realized what a great mom she is, and how thankful I am to her for being the mom I needed when my own was incapable of doing so.
I told her I was deeply moved by the way she mothered me for the past 15 years, like she did for all of the friends her kids brought home. I am endlessly grateful that even while I didn’t have a mom that was emotionally available and invested in my well-being enough to ask me why I was crying so damn much, so I definitely couldn’t tell her I wanted to be on birth control or needed Plan B, Kathleen was there. I mentioned to my bestie that I think I had miscalculated my fertility window and a condom broke. Kathleen got off work, went to Walmart, and brought home Plan B for me, no questions asked, no shame, no chastising, no guilting, nothing. Just empathy and respect that I don’t get from my mother. And I knew it was safe to ask for a ride to Planned Parenthood to get on birth control without access to my parents’ insurance when I didn’t even have money for a copay. I knew I could talk about my sex life and about boys and dating around her comfortably.
And I said I will forever be thankful that she was so committed to being a safe haven for all of us, that I knew I could call at 2 in the morning sobbing too hysterically to explain to my bestie that my way-too-regular intrusive thoughts turned into writing a suicide note here on tumblr, buying pills and driving to a quiet place to OD somewhere I wouldn’t be interrupted before I died, and when my bestie told me to come over, I could barely choke out “I’m here” and in an instant, they both came outside to hold me in the driveway as I sobbed in a full panic attack, before bringing me in so I could sleep in bestie’s bed and know I was safe enough to sleep.
And I talked about finding out I was pregnant at 17 despite being on birth control. My mom and dad still don’t know. But she and bestie knew that I was telling my parents I was sleeping over there on a Friday night, when I was actually in the car with my ex and his sister on my way to another state to get an abortion without my parents’ consent. I wasn’t in a place to take care of a baby, not when I was already in such a fragile emotional state and constantly suicidal for the past two years before I even knew I was pregnant. I knew I couldn’t finish that pregnancy before taking a night time swan dive off the overpass onto the freeway. I knew I would rather die than fail to give an innocent child a decent life with me, fully expecting that we would be homeless, and knowing I wasn’t in an emotional state to place that baby for adoption either. And she didn’t know how bad it was. And she was so sorry I had to go through that. And I hugged her and I wept, and I didn’t let go. Until she had another pain spasm, and vomited, and had diarrhea, and I was in the way of bestie being able to clean her. I needed to go home a while prior to that pain spasm, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull myself away until it was absolutely necessary.
It broke me that my best friend was watching her best friend die such a horrible and slow death. We expected it might have been just a matter of days, her O2 was falling below 70 and hospice told her it’s usually fairly quick after that, but it took a couple more weeks for her body to finally yield to starvation, infection, and exhaustion. 3 more weeks of her medications not being able to touch her pain levels, and sleepless nights with texts saying her oxygen was falling down to the 30s and coming back up, and then she wasn’t really “there” anymore, and she was sleeping for nearly the entire day, and she was still having intense pain spasms that would make her vomit and have diarrhea, and cleaning her up was so painful that bestie described “practically having to peel mom off the ceiling” because of the amount of pain she was in, and bringing my bestie coffee because she wasn’t getting any sleep as she vigilantly and dutifully was at her mother’s side, and going for late night walks to vent and get some fresh air and talk about the living hell they had been experiencing, wondering when it would finally end, because there’s no way she should have still been holding on. She had enough fentanyl and dilaudid to knock out an elephant, and still, she shrieked in pain when her toe got bumped on accident.
I hate that I couldn’t take away their suffering. Watching her extremely slow death was torture. Nobody should have to go through what they went through, and her doctors and nurses couldn’t explain how her body kept trying to let go before coming back again and again and again and again and again. Bestie watched her mom’s funny and sweet spirit fade from her eyes as she had a stroke from the critically low oxygen levels she was experiencing every night. Mom wasn’t even in there anymore. And I would show up late at night, and sit in the living room with the cats, and we would vigilantly listen to hear if mom was waking up and having another pain spasm.
But I’m gonna try to end this memory stream with the one that made us all laugh super hard toward the very end. The last time I spoke to mom, she mentioned her tattoo artist who wore a super low cut shirt and had the most perfect perky tits, and the way she got a great view the entire time her ankle was getting tattooed. About a week later, my bestie and her sister couldn’t get her to wake up, no matter how much they shook her, or how loud they talked or said her name. I texted my bestie that I wondered what mom was dreaming about… hoping it was wonderful dreams of the life she should have been able to live with them, or re-living wonderful memories of her children playing when they were young… or maybe her tattoo artist’s perfect tits. She laughed and read my text to her sister, and two seconds later, mom was awake and confused why they were laughing. Bestie mentioned the tattoo artist’s perfect tits, and mom grinned and said “yeeeeah”
It’s 5am now, and it’s been 4 and a half months without her, and it still doesn’t feel real that she’s ashes in a box and that we will never again hear her call her daughter’s name from down the hallway, or hear the smile in her voice as she told us stories.
I think I’ll listen to some songbirds after I wake up.
Rest well, mom. I hope heaven is a sea of perky tits for you to motorboat through in lesbian bliss. Thanks for being the mom I needed. I’ll do my best to keep looking out for your daughter, and to carry the lessons you taught me into motherhood and grandmotherhood for decades to come. I appreciate you. And I miss you.
