What I Wish My 18-Year-Old Self Could Have Told My Mother When She Was Dying of Cancer, and Why “I’m Sorry” are the Easiest Two Words for Me Now
By: The Human Lead
Tags: Cancer, Adoption, Love, Vulnerability, Forgiveness

What I Wish My 18-Year-Old Self Could Have Told My Mother When She Was Dying of Cancer, and Why “I’m Sorry” are the Easiest Two Words for Me Now The Human Lead Dec 23, 2020·5 min read

It begins with a vivid, very personal memory.

A few nights before my mother died the Priest came, dressed in black, his long robes billowing behind him, swept up in the fitful, frigid January storm, his blue eyes like the blue abyss where nothing comes back, the dark sky behind him as he stood in the narrow doorway of our quiet, Brooklyn home.

As the cold air forced itself into our house- a white flurry whirling around my mother’s face- he stood like a dark figure, with Christmas lights behind him draped like rainbows on our neighbors’ doorways and shrubs, a reminder of a different time.

My mother stood in the doorway enclosed against the sharp wind, her nightgown covered by a pale blue robe carefully positioned to not expose the thin strip of lace sewn across the top edge.

She opened the door wider, her hand outstretched to guide the Priest in.

As he entered our house, his solemnity pressed me back. I fumbled with the sheets on my mother’s hospital bed that sat like an island in our living room. I kept my back to her and the priest, my eyes lowered to my feet. The yellow, wadded up tissues had become moist in my sweating palms.

Fear filled my veins now, flowing through me like a hot liquid, burning me from the inside, my anxiety growing.

Following the pace of my mother’s small, unsteady steps, the priest takes his time down our narrow hallway, holding her arm at the elbow. I hold my breath as the round mirrors in the hallway in bordered green and yellow frames catch her grimaced reflection.

When my mother and the Priest arrive in the dining room, she closes the curtain separating it from the living room, leaving a crack just wide enough for me to get a glimpse of them. The hand-shaped light fixture above casts a shadow across half of my mother’s face, creating the illusion that it has disappeared behind a veiled curtain.

Her sobbing passes through the house like a whisper I am not supposed to hear, startling me, and I almost run. But my shock holds me in abeyance as I am drawn in by the intimate portrait that is unfolding before me.

As the priest gently presses his right hand on my mother’s now almost hairless head and begins praying for her, unconsciously I hear myself praying too.

The sounds of my mother’s fears grow. Her words and tears braid into a softly flowing river, collecting the fragments of her life as it passes between her and the Priest. My tears begin falling along with hers.

“I love you,” I try to scream. “I love you,” I try to run and tell her. “I love you.” But instead I wait in our dark living room, suddenly watching a dark mass growing larger around her.

The words seep from her slowly at first. But then they gain momentum, pulling me into a whirlpool, dragging me into the center, fighting to catch my breath. Until, finally I reach them, and I am swept up in their cataclysmic force, with only these words echoing in my head, “Where will I go once I die? Where will I go once I die? Where will I go once I die?”

Time stops. Our three hearts merge, the beating like one drum loud in my ears, the essence of a human life dissipating into the air like a vapor, the weight of the end of my mother’s life around my ankles pulling me to the ocean floor.

“I am so scared,” she whispers more to herself than the Priest. “I am so scared.”

A few short days later my mother lay in her hospital bed, unable to move, unable to speak, and I sit there at her bedside, staring at her dying body. I scan her varicose veined legs, dry mouth, the red spots on her skin, in absolute disbelief that I hadn’t known, and had refused to see it.

Sitting at her bedside, wanting to hold her hand, wanting to rub her head, wanting to but held down by an imperceptible weight, I remember my mother’s words to me, just a few short nights ago, the night the Priest had come, with tears running down her weathered face.

When the Priest had gone, there was nothing except for the silence ringing in my ears, maybe a car in the distance, the wind in the cold night, the refrigerator humming, and then, the swishing sound of her slippers as she made her way over to me.

I turned around to meet her, putting down the pillow that I had for a few minutes been strangling, and waited for her to say something.

“Well, you heard and now you know,” my mother finally said, breaking the deafening silence, her face like stone but her yellow tears defying her.

Still fixed on the words and emotions she had unabashedly peeled back for the priest- emotions and words I imagined she had shared with me- she continued.

“Well,” taking a tissue from her robe pocket and wiping under your eyeglasses in an attempt to catch each determined tear that rolled uncontrollably, “Now, you know I am dying. I’m sure that makes you happy.”

Motionless next to her bed now my mind replays the words, “I’m sure that makes you happy, I’m sure that makes you happy, now you know I’m dying, I’m sure that makes you happy.”

Words refuse to find their way out. I try. But they stay stubbornly lodged behind the knot in my throat.

In my own eighteen-year-old fragility, I do what I can. I change the bedsheets, her diaper, watch and clean the tears off her face as the rivulets stream down. I put in action what I cannot find in words. I let a higher understanding of the moment guide me.

For several days I took care of my mother in silence, until one night, without really knowing why, an overwhelming feeling of sadness and exhaustion came over me, and I climbed into bed alongside her.

I lowered myself gently next to her, so as not to disturb her, not hurt her, and took her hand.

As we lay still and silent in the dark, I wiped her tears, along with my own.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep next to her, and hoped she knew, that I loved her from the instant she walked into the orphanage twelve years before, placed my six-year-old hand in hers, and she became my mother.