THE LONG GOODBYE....

AS THOSE OF YOU WHO CHECK IN TO MY BLOG KNOW, I’ve been preoccupied with my mother who has Stage IV lung cancer. Up until three weeks ago, she was doing reasonably well, still able to visit and chat, but that is no longer the case. The cancer has affected her mind. This post is about wishes.

I wish her doctors would have told me beforehand what to expect. I wish they would have said that this type of lung cancer travels to the brain. Instead, I had to follow my suspicions and learn what was happening to my mother by checking out things on the internet. It isn’t as if I didn’t ask them to tell me, for them to give me a prognosis. The best they were willing to do was to give me a time frame, an approximation of how long she has. Even then, they impressed upon me that everyone is different.

I wish I hadn’t been hopefully delusional about her. Still, there is a kindness in not knowing.

I wish people wouldn’t be delusional, and ask me to decide when she’s up for a visit. There is no more delusion about that. She isn’t.

I wish people cared more. Despite the bitchy comment above, you soon learn who your friends are – who gives a damn enough to call.

I wish people would stop saying ‘Fuck cancer.’ Yes, I get the sentiment, but it doesn’t come close to addressing what my mother is going through, or how I feel about it. The saying has become a cliché and it trivializes the disease. You can’t fuck cancer. It fucks you.

I wish I wouldn't get all kinds of crappy links to porn sites because of the above comment. I know I will.

I wish I could keep my mother with me, forever.

And in spite of how angry I may have been with her in the past, I realize now, that anger is only a way of losing grasp of what is really important, of letting one’s ego get in the way, of taking a person for granted. Anger only survives if you think you have time to indulge it. When you don’t, it falls away and leaves love and sadness in its wake. And finally, I wish the very best for all of you, for every one of us. I know - a weird sentiment in spite of everything I've already said.

- Susan.