mommy

My mom has just been diagnosed with a malignant tumor in her abdomen the size of a melon. They say it's over 20 cm in diameter and growing. They say it's a liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer where your fat cells become cancerous. I know they are wrong.

I know what is inside her, filling her. Twenty years of anger, twenty years or more of disappointment all pushed down, all swallowed. Twenty plus years of rage at the world. I say twenty years because I remember when she wasn't that woman. I remember when she was a happy person, everybody's instant best friend, the charming beauty with no obvious attributes but the power to attract and please none the less.

My father remembers her to, that's what has kept him married all these years, those glimpses of sunlight, those moments of joy when the angry bitch subsides for a moment and the sweet woman he married reappears.

My brother has hated her for so many years now. He's lived off her, used her, abused her, treated her like she was dirt. She's been his servant, his housekeeper, his cook, his slave, hating him, resenting him while he hates and resents her.

I don't know who's fault it is. My father who loved her well, then hated her with equal force, or my brother who never respected her and has treated her like an idiot his whole life or my sister who left and did not return, the ultimate betrayal of a mother's love. Or it is mine, the one she has always fought with the one who never stood up for her enough, the one who always sided with daddy from the moment she was born. I don't know who changed her, in order to breath I must believe ultimately she changed herself and although we all probably had a hand this was her choice, her decision to transition into the beast, her option to hold on to all the rage, to hold on to all disappointment, to hold it all deep inside herself festering, mutating into something that would kill her.

And now she is the sweet woman again. My father's crying every day because he will miss her, after threatening to divorce her for 20 years he can't stop crying about how he doesn't want to lose her. After years of telling her to cover her fat guts because it's sticking out, after years of not touching her with enough love to notice a growth the size of a child within her after years of taunting her about her weight her weight that was this thing, this thing growing inside her, this toxic ball of hate growing. Now he loves her, now he is going to miss her. My brother's angry, it's the emotion he knows best, for in his heart he is her child. He's angry that she's sick, he's angry that she doesn't want the operation.

The operation. My grandmother died of cancer. I don't remember her, my only memory that is about her is playing in front of the hospital on the lawn with my siblings because my mother had to go into the hospital to see her mother and I wasn't allowed to go in. I was four. My mother lost her mother when she was so young. I never realised that before. When I was little my mother was old, the most oldest, a grownup. And now I think, she's too young to die. 70 is too young to die. Now I think I'm too young to lose my mommy.

My mother thought she'd dodged the bullet, when she turned 65 she relaxed. No one in her family had gotten to 65, no one except her grandmother. Her grandmother had lived till she was in her 90s. Everyone else had died young, her mother, father, brother, cousins, uncle, aunt. She'd lived past 65 so that was it, she could live forever, at least as long as her grandmother. Sometimes life is not cruel, sometimes it is just ironic and sad.

I was the first one to ask if the operation was a good idea. It just didn't sound like her. I'd heard her talk enough times about it, about how the best thing about her mother's death was that at least the butchers didn't hack her into pieces before she went. When I look back now I've had so many conversations over the years about cancer with my mother. I realise now it's always been on her mind. So many conversations where she talked about how you shouldn't cut into tumors they would just spread, and conversations about how chemotherapy was worse than dying. So many conversations over so many years, conversations I wasn't really interested in having, conversations I never really listened to.

She is scheduled for the operation on the 21^st of this month. I talked to the doctor after I read online about the disease. I asked the questions I could remember to ask with call waiting beeping in my ear destroying my every thought, “Doctor what are the beep beep chances it regrows?” beep, beep “50%” “And then you beep beep operate again?” “I don't know beep beep if we'll be able to beep beep operate again.” “Why” “Too much scar tissue.” “And if it regrows beep beep” “It regrows agressively” beep beep “So if she doesn't have the operation beep beep how long until she dies?” beep beep “We don't know the growth beep beep rate so we can't predict the progression of the beep beep disease” “And if she waits beep beep for the operation beep beep” “We don't know how fast the tumor is growing but it beep beep is larger than when the scan was taken beep beep.” “The scan was taken two weeks ago” “Yes, it's a current scan beep beep I would think that the tumor will be inoperable in three to six months.” “So what are the chances that you open beep beep her up and the tumor is too large to operate on now.” “Beep beep, that is a possibility”.

After the call I was in favor of her having the operation, 50/50 didn't sound so bad. Online I'm seeing there is about a 30 percent survival rate for this after five years, less after 10 but young people don't get this disease. Young people haven't swallowed enough rage for this illness.

My first instincts were to go to her. To fly home, to be with her. And I am going, but in two weeks, not the day I wanted to leave, not the minute I wanted to fly but in a time frame that is practical logical. I don't feel practical or logical. I want to fly to her side and hold her around her fat belly, hold the tumor close to me and tell it that I love it, that I love her.

She says she's going to be fine. I know she wants to believe that. And it's possible. I know that. But I also know that this is the end. That my mother's life is at it's end. Whether she lives another 6 months or beats the cancer and has another 10 years this is the homestretch, this is all that is left. I want her to live this end as well as she can, I want her to spend her last days knowing she is loved, doing things she loves to do. I want her to fill the void with love, not hate, to exercise the anger and resentment and disappointment. I want her to die being proud of me. I want for her to live the rest of her days and die bathed in love.