“Does she? I guess I should go up and say hi then, huh? Come with me.” I tugged on her arm and dragged her upstairs to our parents’ room.
If the space outside their bedroom door smelled like a hospital, then the bedroom itself smelled like the morgue. As much as I loved visiting my mother and seeing her lying in bed, waiting with a smile, I despised visiting at the same time. The room was swarming with death and was a constant reminder that today could be the last day I’d get to see my mother’s smile or hear her soft voice.
I was seven when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Sydney was only two. Since her diagnoses, she’d been in and out of the hospital. One year she was in remission and things would look brighter, and then she’d go in for one of her six-month checkups and the walls would come tumbling in again once the doctor would let her know her cancer had returned.
I’d seen her in all stages of the disease. I’d held her hair back as she puked after chemo. I’d held her in my arms as she cried for the loss of her breasts after a double mastectomy, and when that wasn’t enough, I spoon fed her chicken broth when she was too weak to even lift her arms. That’s the stage she was in now, the final stages. My dad was paying a nurse to care for her now since there wasn’t much else the doctors could do for her. She’d gotten to the point where she flat-out refused the chemo.
“Three days of being happy and alive are better than five days of being sick and half dead,” she’d say when Dad would beg her to go in for treatments.
It was her decision and after seeing her so sick she couldn’t move, I understood that decision. Even though selfish parts of me wanted to scream for her to get her ass to the doctor and accept any treatment they offered, the parts of me that understood sickness and pain prayed nightly for her to find peace.
In the future, when my depression gets the best of me, I’ll tell my story of the years I spent being molested by one of the very people who was supposed to protect me. I’ll tell a high-priced therapist all my dirty secrets and I’ll beg for the drugs that will take my memories away. When that day comes, I’ll be asked why I never told anyone. The doctor will ask me why I didn’t ask for help or run to my mother.
The answer will always been the same. I wanted my mom to live a happy life in her final days. She was dying; everyone in our home knew that, including the live-in nurse that now took care of her. Slowly but surely, she was dying. What kind of person would I be to tell her something so devastating so close to her death? It would take a heartless person to do that.
So instead, I kept it locked in, knowing one day, once Mom is gone and Sydney is safely sent away to college, I’ll be able to run away and leave it all behind.
“Hey, Mom,” I whispered into the dark room where she lived. “Feel like some company?”
A thin ray of light cut across the musty room and landed on my mom’s sunken cheeks. I watched as a tiny smile sucked the energy from her eyes.
“Of course I am. Get your butts in here,” she rasped.
Syd and I climbed up in bed with her and snuggled up close. I wrapped my fingers around hers. I didn’t miss how thin her skin felt. It was as if the thin barrier that kept her together was slowly dissolving.
I looked over at Syd and she attempted to smile at me. It was a sad smile, one that was for show only. We both knew it could be any time now and moments like this were priceless.
“So, let’s talk girl talk,” Mom said. Her words were breathless and I appreciated her effort.
She began to softly pet my hand with hers and I closed my eyes and took it in.
Syd and I did most of the talking. At one point we even earned a good laugh from her when Syd proceeded to tell her about some run-in at school with a girl and a fake spider. We stayed and talked until it was