Stories of My Mommy #6

For my boys.

Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend

February 1985 wasn't different from the norm, really. February 1 was celebrated of course and it was with flowers and cake. Mommy turned 42. I was looking forward to cake all week and more cake seven days later when I would turn 15.

But I was most certainly *not* looking forward to the presentation I had to make in health class. I was working on the health issues that came with the vice of smoking. I had researched the organs affected beginning with the fine cillia in the nasal cavity all the way down to the major ones, the lungs. Emphysema, got that down of course but I also did a lot of research on the big "C."

The symptoms of cancer include, among others, fatigue and coughing up blood.

For a few weeks now, Mommy had been dealing with both. I had been giving her hissy fits (not to excuse them but it comes with teenage girl territory) because she and my dad had been working late. Maybe she was trying to avoid my hissy fits by working? It was a vicious circle, if that was the case. But she would still cough up blood. I would mentally chide myself for putting two and two together.

In the middle of the following March, we had a very, very, very rare family conference. It wasn't good. It took my parents about two weeks (as I remember from mental calculations I made at the time) to finally get to this point of talking to us kids.

I don't remember how  most of the talk went. Daddy did most of it. "Kids, your mom has lung cancer..."

He did tell us what the doctors were going to do, how long it would take and that they weren't sure what the results would be. I didn't want to tell them that I knew. Somehow, that would ring hollow or sound presumptuous or both.

I was a little upset that I knew it was cancer because in some contrived and twisted way I felt responsible. In hindsight, God was just preparing me for what would happen. Getting the chance to know about it ahead of time made it easier for me to handle when we were finally told.

Not long after, Mommy had major surgery to remove her right lung and then underwent aggressive chemotherapy. When she came home after surgery, she was really weak and found it hard to move. She showed me the sutures and they were shocking because they went up her back and over the shoulder and the stitches were huge and black and ugly and she could barely pull her gown over her shoulders to show me. They looked painful.

Chemo wasn't fun and she didn't eat much, but it wasn't as aggressive as they thought it would be because she didn't lose her hair (or not enough for me to notice). After the chemo, the doctors said they were pretty sure they got the cancer.

She "worked" at her recovery. I mean "work" because when you have four kids, you have a hard time resting. I did my level best to only be around Mommy when she asked because most of her time, I knew, was spent resting and praying. She had taken my blue leather bound Book of Prayers from my days at good ol' Colegio de San Agustin. I remember going into the bedroom and seeing my book open and upside down so she wouldn't lose her place. She was looking for comfort that really no one besides God was going to give her.

More later.