Not Going Anywhere

"It could be a lot worse," she said as she settled onto the couch. It was where I could always find her these days, either napping under her specially made quilt, engrossed in one of the many books surrounding the living room, or sipping tea while chatting with a visiting friend. I always felt like it was her couch and her couch alone. I felt guilty using it knowing that she could come home and need a place to rest for a bit. Of course I always offered to move, but every time she insisted I stay where I was and she was perfectly fine to walk upstairs. "I know people who are in much worse shape than I am," she added as a quiet puff of air escaped from her omnipresent oxygen tank, affectionately named Oscar, and traveled up the long nasal tube.

It could be a lot worse. But it could also be a hell of a lot better.

I watched as she removed her cap, exposing small tufts of hair that were just beginning to grow back in. What would her hair look like this time? Last time it grew back in curly, which pleased her immensely. She had always envied her younger sister's curly red hair regardless of how she used to tease her that she was adopted.

"Maybe it will grow back in red!" she would exclaim excitedly and was less than pleased when it came back completely gray.

I thought back to what she was like before the first occurrence. She was Super Mom - lawyer by day, family task manager by night. She kept us all in line and on schedule. She was the first one up in the mornings, making lunches and pushing three half-asleep kids out the door - now some days I left in the morning without even seeing her. No homework problem went unaided, no dirty clothes left unwashed. I remember a time when she used to run marathons. That woman would never have been exhausted by walking around a store. She used to garden. Now she couldn't bend over without being overcome with a coughing fit.

None of this was supposed to happen, the coughing least of all. It seems so trivial compared to everything else going on, but the coughing could have been avoided. I think I lost my faith in the Health Care system the day they put my mother on chemo that she's allergic too, not to mention that it took them months to find the reason for her persistent cough. Fluid surrounding her lungs, two liters of it in fact, was their final diagnosis. And it seems to me that no matter how often they drained it out it kept coming back. Just like the cancer.

I would lay awake at night, unable to sleep because of her coughing, I was reminded how very mortal we all are. It's hard to ignore the statistics that are tossed around so much these days. It's the most common type of cancer in women, one in nine women are expected to be diagnosed and 28% will result in death. And despite her doctors best efforts they missed something, because it came back. "I'm not going anywhere," she said when I told her that I was scared. "I'm planning on living a very long life."

"Why don't you join me? Tell me about your day?" I smiled at her and sat down on her couch. Maybe it's because I'm older now and don't live at home, or maybe what's happened to our family has brought us closer together. We talk more, and not just about what I'm doing at school or my weekend plans that involve her driving me somewhere. She has time, she makes time now. And as much as I miss how she used to be she's still the same strong woman who raised me. There's no point in worrying about what could or might happen, she's still here and that's all that matters. She might tire more easily, she might have a couple more doctors appointments than the average person, she might have only one breast, but she's still my mom. And I guess I'm stuck with her for a while.