my mom has been my dad's first line of cancer defense day and night for two and a half years. she has been there for every moment, every set back and triumph, every single bad thing that has happened and also for all the good days. combine this with the fact that she has also been the mouthpiece, the one who tells us kids what is happening and where my dad is at, and it has been a roller coaster ride. every few days something will happen and my mom will text us that dad will die soon, maybe in the next couple days. i checked my phone last night to a text saying that my dad could barely breathe and that he was saying that if he went to sleep he wouldn't wake up. i called my mom and she said she thought he had hours, but possibly days, left. we made the decision to stay put and not go to my parents'. then this morning i get the text that he is fine, walking to the bathroom on his own and asking for food.

i think she feels an unbearable burden to keep us updated lest anything happen and one of us ends up mad at her wishing things had happened differently. i think the burden of being that mouthpiece is one of the worst parts of it for her. as a result, every fear and every worry is not a bump but a jagged roadblock. it is in the end empowering to feel her calm care and her desire that each of us grieves and says goodbye how we need to, enabled by her very honest communication. and while i sometimes think--fuck. i cannot go on like this until he passes--i think we will look back and not regret a thing.

i simultaneously feel that she is acting so strange and also feel (very strongly) that everyone grieves in their own way. when we were there last i was thinking that she seemed kind of reverted to teenagehood/singlehood/i don't even know. she spent a lot of time on her phone texting her friends, snapchatting and sending silly pictures. she went shopping for a new blow dryer and some skin products. her counselor at the hospital told her to make one good change in the midst of this passing, so she bought all new bedding and a bunch of us had a great time unfurling it all and fixing up her pillows and getting it just so. it doesn't seem that weird, but when you consider that my dad has moved to a hospital bed in the living room and will likely never sleep in that bed with her again--she was making that bed anew for her and herself alone--there is a different dimension to it.

it's all a ball of contradiction. and my mom was a ball of contradiction even in normal years. through the anxiety and the clinical depression and the--frankly--fighting and sometimes the hell of us all growing up under her sensitive and therefore controlling arm, she has always been a 21 year old at heart--a playful, rebellious, we-are-infinite believer, more than anyone else i have met. she has a young heart and soul. after my dad's funeral my mom will not be receiving anyone--no, we in the immediate family will be returning to the house for a dance party and food. there is a powerful sense of how relieved we will be, and also there is a powerful sense of her future, that she will get a life she never had--to go to school, to study, to live on her own terms, to do what she wants. that she will get a second chance on the youth that she willingly gave to my dad and to us, her kids. i suspect a lot of her acceptance of me--law school, possibly no kids--has come from her own experience of realizing she will soon be on her own and that a lady in the end has to do some things for herself--she will be, in a sense, trapped by the things she didn't do, like finish school, but also finally free to do things for her, like study anything she wants worry-free now. she raised her family and she raised us well. i think it was a hard and often dark time for her. she truly gave of herself and i have never met anyone as selfless as she has been. it's hard to convey in writing that as weird as this is, i can't blame her at all for her hope and her regeneration.

we take the weird as a very definite and important part of reality. she is ready for him to pass. OF COURSE she is. we all feel that way a little bit, but maybe not as acutely as she does. perhaps that's why it's so difficult to see my dad's denial, terror and sadness at his own mortality. my mom continues to care for him endlessly, selflessly. as ready as we are, i don't think he knows it because as ready as we are, there is no sense of anxiousness when we are with him. it is very, very squarely readiness and not impatience. perhaps that is the kind of readiness god feels. when we are in a moment with him there's a sense of eternity in the most lds-sense--a sense that those memories will never die, that that love will never end, and that we will have more moments like that together.

so yes. all of this results in a bunch of weird drama. and perhaps it will go on like this for a while that my dad will tell us he will not wake up again and then wake up and ask for yogurt. it is the ironic cost of grieving, coming to terms, and eventually of peace.

two weeks ago i was expecting to spend last week in the ICU, waiting for a slow recovery, waiting maybe even for my dad to pass away in or right after surgery. i thought it would be like last time--no cake walk, certainly, but doable--a lot of quiet time at the hospital, a lot of helping my mom out around the house.

i must admit i was pretty surprised to essentially jet off last monday night to word that there would be no surgery. instead, hospice. instead, waiting, instead, "enjoying the quality of life that he has left." when we got there my mom kept saying how peaceful and right the decision felt. my brother said how much better my dad seemed since he had decided not to do the surgery, which honestly completely displaced my mind and heart because my dad was an absolute wreck: not really making eye contact with anyone. starting to cry when he was left alone in an empty room. weak and generally spending most of his time curled up in the fetal position on the couch. this was the peaceful option that was right? this was him in his better state?

they should add a tenth circle of hell because a hospice home is its own circle of hell. the nurses and the care are fantastic--my mom couldn't believe how many resources were available to her, and after all this time of having done it all alone--the pills, the appointments, the helping him shower--i am relieved for her. she is even thinking she will take respite and come visit us for a few days.

but oh, the quiet, unholy, longsuffering, understated hell of our family home last week. i have one brother who was so in shock that he would smile like a maniac during every conversation about death, every conversation about how to call hospice now, every conversation about how to help my dad in case they are home alone together.

my reaction was pretty similar. generally the last few weeks i have avoided thinking about it, avoided crying, avoided losing it. i told myself i was weathering it well. but then, the wednesday we were there, i woke up pretty much incontinent. okay... i can deal with that. but then that night i started throwing up, and i was that way all night, i couldn't even take a sip of water. there were a lot of conversations about how even as a little girl i felt stress as physical illness. it was post barf when my mom told me with the weirdest mix of horror and care in her eyes that if it was too much to handle emotionally i could go home and no one would think different. i told her i was fine and then barfed again and cried in my bed for an hour and then slept for 36 hours. when i started trying to get up i was so weak that i couldn't stand up for more than a few seconds. when i finally showered i got dressed and laid down with my hair in a towel and slept for a few more hours. this continued on into thursday when we came home, and i was still so unwell that i took friday off to stay home sick.

apparently i slept through the worst of it. through the nurse teaching them how to administer the anti seizure medication to my dad. through my dad's parents laughing in her face and arguing endless with my mom when she tried to explain hospice; through my grandpa saying that he had blabbed everything to my dad's boss, even though my mom tried so hard to keep them on a need to know basis so she could continue getting paychecks. through my mom exploding on everyone and leaving the house for hours at a time.

all this time, for two and a half years, my dad has been in denial about the fact that he would never get better. there are a lot of cancer patients who live with true joy, who truly understand their limits, and who go on living in the fullest sense. this is not and has never been my dad. even when the tumor returned and they came back from the doctor's appointment he told us he wanted to be around for more weddings, grandkids, etc. my mom had to remind him that no, even best case scenario, he wouldn't be. fast forward a maybe-surgery then no surgery and now hospice and he has finally seemed to imagine it is the end. the wednesday i got sick he had asked us to take him out to a bunch of stores and one thing he looked at were these new, expensive, special bike pedals he could use to ride his stationary bike... which he will probably never ride again. it was a lot of that. it's like he's scared absolute shitless but his mind still can't comprehend that this is not another crescendo but a grand, closing diminuenco. the only other thing my mom said about his decision about the surgery was that he was more afraid of recovering from surgery than he was of going on hospice. it is in no unkindness and in no bitterness that i say that it seems to me there could be no normalcy or breath or good "quality of life" times after having to make such a decision based solidly on fear. it's not his fault; it's not anyone's fault.

i wish i could say there were good, sweet things, too. i suppose getting to spend time with my dad before i know he will pass should be. but honestly it's not as if he is in a process of acceptance, or able to look on the bright side, or like there is any actual peace in it.

i was mostly feeling better until i came back to work this morning and everyone asked me how my long vacation was. i guess from now on it will be weathering stupid comments and getting by my menial life, trying not to throw the fuck up from the stress, while i wait weeks or months for the call.