Working

Today, I am at work and I have to work. As I did yesterday and as I will absolutely have to tomorrow. And I am. Or at least, I am trying.

Yesterday was Wednesday and I woke up early and walked into Dupont to see a doctor who is supposed to help me get through all of this and make it to the other side in one piece. As I sat down in the chair I wondered, as I always wonder, how to start. I am in the middle of my feelings-- smack dab in the center of this thing-- and I am not entirely sure how to pull back and see to the start point or to a proper segue or to the exit ramp out of this mess in order to stretch it out into a understandable, linear narrative. The whole process of turning complex feelings, events, fears, joys, whatever into easily understood stories narratives with a beginning, middle, and end just seems wrong some days. But, anyway, I try. Every week, well everyday, I try to revise my day, or days or months or years, into something I, but maybe more importantly other people, can understand. I sketch myself a life replete with lessons, morals, conflict, and characters. Some days I am the main character, but most days -- this may sound weird -- I'm not. I know myself, or more precisely I feel myself to the Rosencrantz or maybe Gildenstern to somebody else' story. And these days the central is Mom's. Well, most days the central story is Mom's. She is, I have no doubt, a character in a novel. I they had ever met, Virginia Woolf would have definitely based a character on her. Even still some days I think Mom is Mrs. Dalloway, others I see her as Mrs. Ramsey. Some days I flatter myself and consider myself Lily, but most days I know I am Sally. A walk-on with an entire life that happens off the page.

Anyway, so back to therapy. So, I sit there across from this wonderfully caring doctor, this person I know so little about (she has a brother and a kid and had trouble getting pregnant at some point, but that's it) and I start to tell her about the unsucessful procedures and follow-up procedures. And how worried I am about Mom and brother and family. And then how sorry I feel for myself. And I start crying, because it's true and sounds so selfish. And then I start really crying, the way I first did when I eight and I was sitting outside at night. It was warm so probably summer. And I realized for the first time that I would never see my father, who passed away five years prior, again. And I that I had forgotten him. I mean, completely. And I felt it as a negative. It was, in a word, terrifying. To feel "forever" as a giant absence, as the opposite of everything. And that's how I understand death, even now, as a giant absence. It this feeling that has followed me since I was a child and follows me still. And, when Mom passes, will take me over for a while. Sitting in the chair, talking to the doctor, I felt it -- a taste of that overwhelming absence -- break over me, flood me, and knock the wind out of me.

So sitting in the chair, I cried for Mom, for my brother, for the family. During that hour I cried (hiccup cried) for me. Because I know that I will be gone for a while. Not just my own dreams and ambitions, but me, but the person who laughs without a lump in my throat who celebrates without wondering about the "how many mores". I cried, because I can't trust the fun of life, the beauty of life to come back. And I cried for the little girl who keeps coming back. The little one who doesn't want to loose her mother, who misses her father, and keeps hoping that this is all a terrible dream.

For a couple months before this bought of medical reality, I was able to put that sad, scared girl to bed. I tucked her in and she started to fall asleep, her cheeks red and raw from the sobbing, but she had started to doze. So, I starting to tip toe out of the room, humming softly to mask the sound of my tread. I was about to turn, to shift my energy to figuring my own life within these parameters, when an alarm sounded and the girl, warm from sleeping, woke up screaming.

Running.

Since Mom's latest diagnosis, or medical debacle, I have spent most days hiding from friends and co-workers. I average about three minutes a phone call and have had virtually no contact with people outside of my mom, brother, and family. I have dodged my roommates and the eyes of people who pass me on the streets. I keep my office door closed and say no to lunch. But yesterday, my friend quite literally didn't take no for an answer. He called. I said I was going grocery shopping around the corner. He came into the grocery store, phone to his ear, making me smile until he found me. He pushed my cart; told me ridiculous stories about the girls he's dating, and made me laugh. A real true laugh. So, I bought him a candy bar and made him dinner.

In my family, the call me the clown. Inside of minute, any quiet waiting room I enter will be filled with stupid stories and silly impressions told a little louder than they have to be. I laugh loudly taking care to through my head back and close my eyes. I try to laugh like I mean it. Because for a second, if I act it, it is something close to the truth. And this last week, I came armed with stories, jokes, and snacks. I had books to suit every family member's taste and magazines that ran the gamut from cheese to elegance to fitness to international economics. These were on hand to respond to changing moods and anxiety levels. A little string cheese does wonders for panic and worry. Or the food issue of a travel magazine helps when its been two hours and you are starting to smell like the hospital's plastic chairs. And herbal tea comes in handy when some convinces themselves that the worst is here, while a trashy celebrity rag helps to prolong the moment when you convince yourself that this is all crazy-talk and everything will be ok. I have learned when to pass out magazines and snacks to anyone (and every one) within arms reach. Friday, I got the little girl across from me to smile with an antioxidant rich piece of dark chocolate. I try to talk and joke and counsel. I hug and tease and have only cried twice in all the many long hospital visits.

Sitting in the waiting room this time, some time around hour four, I realized that over the past three years I have learned how to be this ridiculous person: half me, half kidergarten teacher. A highly functioning, laughing person good in a crisis or semi-crisis. And over the past three years I have also learned how to shut down most superfluous communication pathways between myself and the people I love. Only the crucial biological functions ("I am hungry, sick, tired") bares mentions. Except for Mom, she is the only one who gets to have any part of me. I'm sure most days it feels like a focused, high powered daughter spray. Probably annoying. Probably too much. But, she's it. And like a machine trying to preserve resources, I shut off those furthest away first, then the next rung, then the next until I have closed myself into a quiet hideaway where no one says the wrong thing or tries to understand.

In the mornings, I run hard and fast outside. I run alone with headphones keeping the world out. So the city just becomes a backdrop. Or else, I close my door so I figure out how to piece it all, this whole thing, together again. So I can plaster together a face to carry me through the next week or month.

And I need to do this. Strangely, this process of withdrawing helps me to stay present longer; it helps me cultivate the strength connect and fall in love with the world outside of my family, outside of my fear, and apart from my sadness. But over the past 12 months, these breaks are getting longer and more solitary. So, when B came to grocery store and made me laugh, it had been over a month. And when I laughed this time, I didn't think about throwing my head back, it just happened. For a minute, I felt myself come back to life. And so maybe its time to come out of solitary confinement. There are two weeks between now and the next procedure. Two weeks where she is here and she is ok. I have two weeks to live loudly and laugh without faking a thing.

Message in a Bottle

I know its sort of five years ago to assume no one will be reading your blog. Now-a-days it is pretty much assumed that everyone will read your blog and that they will be deeply affected by it and you'll be offered a choice position to change the world or get a book deal or make millions of dollars. Not me. I'm not writing a happy blog; not an informative blog; not a artsy blog; and it has nothing to do with changing the world. I don't really care who reads this or what they think of its construction and syntax. I don't care if it's biased. And I certainly don't care if its newsworthy.

I am writing this as a woman in her late 20s whose life is changing slowly, predictably, painfully. And this is my version of the 21st century message in a bottle: I will write about how life is happening and my bumbling efforts to navigate it and post it on this blog and it will bob through the cyber-ocean to probably -- eventually -- sink.

This isn't happening.

My mother is dying. We don't say that. We don't think that. But this is the truth of it. And it is happening slowly. So slowly that the months between her scans will pass by and I will start to try to pull my own life -- my life separate from her disease -- together. And I will be lulled into almost forgetting and will start planning, before the tests begin and the post-test craziness of treatments and procedures start in.

It is like making setting up your life under a magnificent wave break. For several weeks and months the wave gains height and body, before breaking, all force and ferocity, over your head. But, there is, I won't lie, a peace when you know the bad is coming; when there is a rhythm to the tests, scans, diagnoses, and sadness. So that even in this mess, a sweet monotony takes over: she has a bad test/scan/etc.; I move home; my stepfather forgets; Mom gets depressed; I find the positive; Mom finds the negative; then we switch; things quiet. Until, the next tests. And, like the rinse, wash, repeat cycle, I move home.

And here is the thing: I know that this too shall pass. One day the break point will move from over our heads to further in-land or out. And Mom's tests will return something definite. And the step-dad's senility will dissolve into early onset something. And my brother will become sicker, meaner, and sadder. And one day, sooner than I would like it could be pretty quiet in the ocean with just me bobbing around alone.