Mom Called 7/07

Mom called

Mom called. I can picture her now, walking around her kitchen, the phone plastered to her ear. The summer sun streaming in through the window bathing the room in its golden light. She does small tasks while she talks to me. (Have you talked to your sister lately?) Splash, clank, the sounds of running water- she's doing dishes. (What's new at work?) Sizzle, pop, crackle, scrape - she's cooking dinner. (Your grandmother went into the hospital this week) silence- she must be folding clothes. She talks to me every day. Without fail. Every day.

I remember the summer I began dating my husband. We were still in that lovely "togetherness" phase that happens so often at the beginning of a relationship. I got into the habit of turning the telephone off on Saturday mornings because we liked to sleep in. Mom just couldn't understand that I didn't wake up at 6:30 a.m. every day of the week like she did. I told her not to call till after 10:00 a.m. She didn't hear that part of the conversation.

The next Saturday, just like every one previous to that, the phone rang at precisely 7:00 in the morning. Yes, I answered it - successfully breaking 'the mood'. The next weekend....the phones(even my cell phone) were shut off on Friday night and not turned on again until around noon. Apparently mom had tried to call and received no answer.

She was incensed."What if some emergency had occurred?" There had been none. "What if something had happened to your grandmother??" Nothing had happened. 'What if someone had died?" No one did, and even if they had, I reminded her, I would NOT be the first person on anyone's list to call. When I was reachable, the person in question would still be, I am sure, deceased. Silence on her end. "Well, if that's the way you feel about it, well that's the way you feel about it." Silence broken.

As punishment, my mother did NOT call me for forty eight hours. I'm sure I was supposed to feel guilty and chastised. Strangely enough, my future husband and I went to a movie and had a wonderful time. We went to dinner. No guilt in evidence, anywhere. Two whole days worth of guilt free life. I finally relented and called her. Tuesday.

She acted as if nothing negative at all had occurred and so did I, we fell back into the routine of our daily calls about nothing in particular. However, she never again called before 10:00 a.m. and I no longer felt the need to turn my phones off on a Friday night.

Mom called it was a Thursday. Her voice sounded strained and thin. "Are you sitting down?" she asked. I giggled a little and said that I was at my desk at work, so I was, of course, seated. A weird feeling passed over me. Like someone was walking across my grave or something spooky was about to happen. "I have some news," she said in that strange shaky voice that I had not heard before. "I have to have some tests tomorrow....don't worry I'm sure everything will be all right."

We talked for a few minutes more, I assured her that I just knew it would all be just fine. Bad things happened to other people, they didn't happen to me and they didn't happen to my family.

I called mom the next day. Test results not in yet. I called mom that night. Yes, she got the results and she was trying to work up the courage to call as soon as she figured out how to tell me and my sister. How do you tell someone you have cancer? It's not something you can write in an e-mail. Telephone conversations don't seem adequate either, but since she lived a few hours away, that was going to have to suffice.

Mom had passed out at work earlier in the week and was taken to the emergency room, where she had been admitted to the hospital. My sister and I had wanted to come to her but she insisted that it would be stupid, considering she would probably be released by the time we got there and we both had our jobs and families to attend to.

Her blood count was very abnormal. She thought she was just anemic. Her white blood cells outnumbered her red blood cells by about 1000 to 1. She had lymphoma and she just thought she had a bad cold. According to one of her nurses she was a legend on that particular floor of the hospital. Usually when people were admitted with blood counts of that caliber, they were already dead.

She had ignored the various signals her body had been sending her for weeks and even months. The swelling in her ankles and the fatigue were just passed off as minor ailments. She put her feet up a lot and rested. The anemia was treated with Iron tablets. Little things to be dealt with and quickly forgotten.

During the months of her treatment my sister and I would take turns going to visit her every couple of weeks. That way mom got to see us and we her, but we didn't have to take too much valuable time off from our jobs and families. She was one of the bravest people I had ever met. During this same period of time her own father (my grandfather) as well as her sister-in-law (my aunt) were also battling terminal cancers of their own.

My grandfather had bone cancer, my aunt had cancer of the liver and pancreas. Mom was single at that time. She had no husband or boyfriend to stay by her side. My parents had divorced ten years earlier. Between working her own job and going for chemotherapy and medication, she was also visiting hospital floors for her father and a woman who was as close to her as a sister. Watching them die was like looking into her own possible future she told me, and it frightened her.

On one of my extended weekend visits that summer, I took mom for her chemotherapy. I wanted to see what she was going through and I felt powerless to help in any other capacity. The poison they pumped into her system to kill the cancer cells made her nauseous and dizzy and she couldn't drive. This was toward the end of her treatment. She had lost weight, she was pale, her hair was gone and she was never seen outside the house without her wig(a horrible creation that looked nothing like her own hair at all) or a colorful scarf wrapped as a turban covering her head. She nicknamed herself "suburban turban". She was tired a lot and napped frequently when she could.

We went to the treatment center and the nurses there explained the whole procedure to me, I spoke to her doctor and he explained that her treatment was progressing very well.

Apparently if you are going to get cancer, the type to get is the type that she had. It responds well to treatment and the survival rate is very high. I never thought, in all my life, that the words, 'high survival rate' would make me happy, but on that day, I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait to get back to the house and tell my sister what I had learned.

I sat next to mom in one of the comfy recliners in the treatment center and watched as the medication dripped into the shunt that they had implanted into her chest. I watched a soap opera as the treatment went on. It would last for at least an hour, they had warned. I watched the other patients there. I thought about their various illnesses and I thought about how brave they were and how grateful I was that I was not one of them.

When mom was about five minutes into her treatment she fell asleep. Her face took on an almost childlike innocence. Her breathing was deep and regular as her body rested and her mind relaxed. I smiled a little as she snored lightly. Strange that I should find a moment of any kind of joy in that place. The nurse smiled at me and told me that she does that every time. I watched her as I know I have watched my own children sleep. Marveling at the peace that slumber gives us, watching her breathe, praying.

When we returned from the hospital, my sister and six year old daughter greeted us.
Catie drew grandma a picture and she asks if she can lay down with her when she takes a nap. Mom gratefully obliges, the treatment had made her very dizzy and she is looking forward to the rest. She takes off her wig while preparing to lay down and we all watch her. Her head is fuzzy, like a newborn chick, and her green eyes are huge in her pale porcelain face.

My daughter, in all her six year old wisdom, hugs her and tells her that she looks beautiful and should always wear her hair that way. My sister and I and our mother all laugh at that and Catie just smiles.

After that day, the wig and the turban were retired. If mom was going anywhere in public she wore a baseball cap to prevent her scalp from being burned by the sun or to keep her head warm in the wind. If she was indoors she wore her fuzzy head proudly as a badge of honor for the trials she was going through.

Her hair began growing back that fall. It came in very curly- unlike it was before. She was thrilled and said she would take anything that would cover up her head. My Grandfather died that winter. My aunt about a month later.

That long weekend in August was the last time I would ever see either of them.
Mom made it through that year, and the year after that, and the year after that. In fact, after her annual check up last year she was officially declared "in remission". Her doctor said that the chances of recurrence are very low. Again, a phrase I never dreamed would be a reason for any feelings of joy on my part.

I called mom today. I didn't really have anything of any great consequence to say to her. I asked after her husband(my step-father, her high school sweetheart and first love - they married a few years ago). I told her how her grandchildren are doing. She asked after my husband.
Most of all, I was just glad she was there to pick up the phone. I know that one day she won't be. Today, she is.