Death & Wildflowers
Superblooms are covering California, thanks to the combined efforts of rainstorms and global warming. All the hillsides around me look like they are shimmering in shades of lavender, blue and poppy orange on the endless green grass. Bright signs of life surround me, and all I can think about is death, pain, and abandonment.
The hillsides looked the same that year. The year I spent driving endlessly north. The winding roads through the redwoods opened up to clearcut meadows covered in violet and orange. I wish I could take comfort in the knowledge that her last spring was filled with beauty and color. But truthfully, she was so far gone in pain by that time even to see it. Cancer cast an impenetrable haze over everything for her. For both of us, really.
Spring’s fickle nature mirrors the rapid way that hope and love can degrade into despair and pain. A day full of bright sun and blue skies can suddenly turn to wind and rain. The dark storm clouds often lurk at the far side of the endless blue skies overhead. That season started with the bright light of hope — the tumor was shrinking, and the poison of chemo was winning. Then the rain came, washing away the progress.
The twisted nature of caring for a terminally ill parent is difficult to explain. Trying to find a balance between caring for her as a child does and caring for her as an adult should — choosing what her heart needs versus what her body needs. Watching her fight to keep a sense of personal control as the disease slowly ate away everything that made her who she was. It was unbearable to witness and made me make decisions I regret.
Those last few weeks play out endlessly in my mind. Dark and hazy. Numb. Visions of her hunched over in agony, unable to speak. Night-blackened roads, miles from any help or comfort. Terrifying stops on the side of the road, not knowing what to do. Not knowing if her altered state was from too much medication or not enough. Fighting with people at the hospitals to get her help. Watching her arm and hand turn blue, the blood-clot that would eventually end her pain. The slightest touch was agony for her, and I was forced to torture her as I moved her from the cars to the wheelchairs to the beds. The sound of her pain still haunts me.
The months of living in constant agony slowly stripped away the last of what made me her daughter and replaced it with a faceless shadow, an angel of death. Sounds melodramatic, I know. But I became tied inexorably to her pain. I witnessed it, I caused it, and I could do nothing to end it.
I remember the exact moment I realized my mother was gone. It wasn’t the last time I heard her voice or the last time I saw her chest rise and fall. Terminal illness is unfair in so many ways. One of the cruelest is how it will occasionally allow the person from before to slip through to the surface before snatching them back with a vengeance. That night she sounded strong and solid, the voice and mind of my loving mom tricking me into falling back into being a daughter. Tricking me into believing she could give me comfort like she always had before. I asked her the unanswered question that had haunted me with my dad, “You know how much I love you, right?” silly and stupid, I know. A child seeking validation from a parent. The disease must have heard the hitch in my voice. With that one selfish question, she was gone for good — pulled back down into the ever-present abyss of fear she now lived in. She suddenly sounded exactly how I felt — lost, confused, and scared. I was never able to bring her back after that, never able to make sure she knew that I loved her. That one childish need left me completely abandoned.
So now I sit here, surrounded once again by the colorful signs of life. And all I want is for the rain to come back and the winds to howl and scream with me.
