Ending the Beginning/Beginning Again

My three and almost-a-half year old baby starts pre-school tomorrow.

(Oh Little Bee, I hope you will grow to realize how fantastic you are and always remember how much you are loved...)

If three and almost-a-half year olds needed it, I'd wish good luck.

Also

My Aunt called this morning to tell me that she had complained to the Charge Nurse who looks after my mom's care... just in case I might hear anything about it in the future. Actually, though, she told me because she needed some support. Just as my brothers and I do. And every other sibling that my mother has... I think... I have yet to hear a word from her brother. Certainly, though, he is as concerned, distraught and frustrated as the rest of us.

I'd like to image that every humiliating scenario that a hospital patient might endure would never be experienced by my mother... my mom. Too weak to get out of bed or even sit up in it without having to call and then wait for assistance... Too feverish to be able to feed herself or wipe away the food that might have escaped the spoon and left it's mark anywhere on her face... Too slow to make it to the bathroom after the chemo has rendered the muscles of her bowels lazy and fatigued and useless. 

To sick to visit with her grandson and talk about trucks and trains and his three good friends; Bee, Monster and Dinosaur... who happens to be a T. Rex and enjoys eating noodles.

What's Really Going On

My mother is in the hospital.

Unlike the last time she was enduring in-patient chemotherapy I am not at leisure to fly back and forth from San Francisco to Long Beach/LA. This is difficult because I cannot stand to think of her as being lonely or scared or disoriented or uncomfortable... and I want to be with her so I can at least bear some of the burden that I imagine to be unbearable. 

One significant thing about loving someone with cancer is that the ability to imagine that someone being around forever erodes just as their health does. Hopefully there is a remission. And with it a reprieve from the heartache that accompanies watching someone suffer... A recess from the constant considering that that someone might have only this borrowed sort of life left ahead. 

This is what is tearing me apart, the thought that my mother might never again experience a life without discomfort... or hair loss... or exhaustion... or pain... or hospitals.  And if I could I would guarantee her that her final years, whenever they may be, would be filled with comfort and laughter and love... and experienced in her own home.

If I cannot have a mother who will live forever then, at least, I want her to live in peace.