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.