She drank the contrast with a grimace. "This isn't going to stay down," she predicted. I returned to Gathering Blue, and tried to appear nonchalant. She talks to me more, confides in me more, when I appear nonchalant. I like the talking, the confiding. I knew the moment I saw her yesterday morning that Mom felt unwell. It created a vacuum of niceties; Dad and I set our jaws and kept our gaze forward. She doesn't like the attention. She's been in pain. She doesn't like the noticing.

After the scan, we sat in the oncology waiting room, the three of us. Dad and I sipped coffee. He people-watched, I read. Mom stretched across three waiting room chairs situated in a row...the sitting being too much to bear. We had a long time to wait. Every now and then, one of us would make a benign comment. "The construction is really coming along." "It isn't as busy as it normally is here." Little nudges to remind us of the humanity amidst the antiseptic air. Then, in a quiet voice, mom asked us to follow her when she was called back.

This was a big deal. There is only one other time that Mom has allowed people back to the oncologist's exam room...I was not home then. It was that fateful day last June—Mom still has the appointment notification slip in her wallet—when time became endangered. She said she knew when he came in the room that day that it hadn't been a good scan...and indeed, it had not. Asked if she'd like him to break the news to Dad and Charlie, she nodded gratefully, and they were brought back to the room—to hear the ugliness, receive grief counseling, and think of infinity against a ruler of months. I was to receive the news via phone, from 1200 miles away. A return to Wisconsin was in the works within 24 hours.

She typically likes getting the news herself, coping with it on her terms, then telling us. We afford her this right, imagine away the gnawing hunger to know everything as soon as it is there to know. We can't give her much...but we can give her her dignity. Yesterday, her preference for private counsel was negligible. She knew what was coming. We all knew what was coming. She was saving a nurse a trip back to the waiting room to call my father and me back. We were all on the same page, though reading to ourselves. "Weeks...." We were expecting them to give us mere weeks. The suffering has been evident.



But such tidings did not come. We sat in that small exam room...dad sipped coffee, looked around...I sipped cappuccino, read...Mom fidgeted on the table, gave in, and reclined to seek a release from the pain. It hurts her to be awake...and she's too uncomfortable to sleep. Constant fatigue and discomfort: this has been her reality. Dr. Holen came through the door on jaunty step and said, "It was a good scan!" Huh? How is this possible? The tumors still grew...but by tenths of a centimeter...much reduced rate of growth. The pain though, what is the pain? They don't know.

We left the hospital after nine hours. We were weary with the waiting. (accidental alliteration) Mom held a prescription for morphine in one hand, and the overnight pack of chemo over the other shoulder. I'm about ready to write off this whole concept of logic. I don't understand how a perfectly strong, in-shape, prime-of-her-life woman of 46 can go in for a routine physical to find that she has end-stage cancer—and at 48, she suffers constantly, knows ever-present exhaustion, and her cancer is slowing in growth. I don't think any of us really know what to think. She caught me sixish weeks ago crying quietly at her bedside. I was jobless, husbandless, and—I was sure in no time at all—I would be motherless as well—the next day's scan would prove it, of this I was certain. I, myself, was feeling like a cancer. My powers of prediction proved wrong with that scan, too...I suppose it is a lesson. We're not meant to grasp the live wire of a timeline.

Back in November, I promised myself that I would spend the weeks in between scans in a state of joy, appreciation...and push thoughts of the future aside. I succeeded in all but the past few days...but then, today is the next scan.



I don't know what to think going into this, what to hope. She's had some rough days as of late...

Okay, well, my head is very full right now, and filing the thoughts in order to express myself clearly is a paper cut waiting to happen. I'm off to try to psych myself up for free waiting room cappuccino....

We always spend the day with my father's family.

We used to gather very early in the morning, and my cousins and I would play a Christmas cassette sung with the stylistic genius of Alvin & the Chipmunks. We would chase each other around, pretending to be impish elves. There was the Christmas production we four performed, a new play each year, and conceived on that very day. The adults indulged us as we fumbled our lines and giggled outrageously.

We'd sport puffy snow suits, resembling four pastel Michelin men, and frolic about in the snow. Snow was fun then. It wasn't a nuisance or a hazard—I don't even remember it being cold—it was just fun. We built snowmen, crafted snow forts, and summoned snow angels. We played hide-and-seek around the tall, peaked drifts, too in love with life to care that our footprints left telling clues as to our whereabouts. We bargained with the hand of time and imagined that if we could run hard enough and long enough, that nature could reverse and our mothers wouldn't call us inside as the light began to fail.

We sang carols and watched It's A Wonderful Life—on all three local stations. We ate cookies and candies, and sipped our hot cocoa with candy cane stir-sticks. We sat before the tree and vibrated with excitement as we looked at the wobbly piles of presents that rested there. Gift-unwrapping occurred after dinner, and not a moment sooner. You know, dinner never came soon enough?

Oh, so serious we became! School assignments! Studying! With finals in our recent memory, leisure did not come readily on this day. We leafed through A Christmas Carol, glanced at old, black and white family pictures. We listened somberly to the adults in the other room, and scanned the newspapers for articles of interest.

We wore wristwatches and glanced at them regularly. We played cut-throat games of euchre and I remember delving heavily into the sarcastic. The television played in the background, and filled up the empty noise usually left to the wolves of family interaction.

Dinner still never came soon enough. The sooner we had dinner, the sooner the day would end...and the sooner we could get back to our silent brooding. My goodness we were a surly sort! Teenagers...*pft!*

We did not gather until noon today. We sat together on inviting furniture and discussed our goings on. We reacquainted ourselves with one another. We laughed full and long, our bellies aching from the activity. The hugs seemed harder, more drawn out. The closeness was inexplicable...velvety bonds of steel linking our well-beings.

I left for a couple of hours to attend church tonight. I returned to find that I had been discussed. "Is Laura ok?" Before Thanksgiving, I sent out a letter to my family, explaining that Miles was gone, not to think badly of anyone, and begging that the subject be avoided during get-togethers. They have respected my wishes with utmost propriety.

Respectful as they are, the worry is rampant. They were a hug-y bunch today. I'm not talking about the butterfly kiss of meeting forms, but embraces that melt two into one. The embraces that you never want to end...those that invite you to exhale entirely, and become malleable in each others arms.

Repeatedly, they expressed pride. Subtly, almost unnoticeably. They wanted so badly for me to know their hearts, but refused to go against my wishes in bringing up the topic. Pride. Not shame. I guess when something goes against what you perceive to be the natural course of life, you think the worst thing that can be thought...and the fear burns hot when you imagine it in the heads of your loved ones. I have been hanging low. I have been avoiding family gatherings. I have been stupid.

Today, I felt so alive, so very sentimental and warm. It has been a rough year, but if I had to go through it all again every year for the rest of my life just to reach today at the end of each twelvemonth, I would do it. We didn't play in the snow or put on a play today...however, we were sarcastic, and dinner couldn't come soon enough—it smelled heavenly! We teased one another mercilessly, we shared in successes, commiserated in woes...in short, we loved.

It's strange how the death of a relationship mimics the impending death of a disease. Early on, my mother and I observed the link, the sameness in our hurt. She said, "Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, 'Who are you?' Sometimes you wonder if you'll ever see yourself there again." I understand perfectly. I deluded myself thinking that it was the backdrop that was off, the backdrop that colored everything a shade of wrong. It was an easy assumption to make. I would spend long minutes staring at my reflection, never seeing myself at all. Only death, desertion, loneliness.

I wasn't seeing myself because I wasn't looking at myself. I say all the time that it isn't what happens to you that makes a good life, but how you react to what happens to you. Unfortunately, all of my quaint little philosophies crawled to an unreachable shelf in the beginning, there. They gave me my space, allowed me free range to go slightly mad with the process. All suffering is not bad. People tiptoe around pain, trying to avoid it at all cost. They do themselves a grave injustice, for only from the greatest misery can be born the greatest joy.



It was as though I slept for six weeks straight after Miles skipped town. I could not bear the nourishment of food or the refreshment of water. I lived in a vacuum of disillusionment, and I stared at blank walls, daring them to cave in around me. I am certain that my loved ones looked upon my pathetic form and mourned, "She isn't strong enough to survive this." Strength is a funny concept we humans have. With hundreds of contrasting definitions on its figurative page, I think it's safe to say that strength is something that you have to shape to fit your own heart, and only then can you wield it.

It wasn't my husband's leaving that hurt so deeply—but rather, my friend's betrayal...and that will always ache. But, I can accept this—I can accept that not all memories have to pass a rigorous assessment of goodness and warmth to be inducted into the banks of my recollection. But mostly, I can accept that misery really is as valuable to me as joy. I need them together, or both depreciate. I am stronger for it. I am stronger for letting the wretchedness take me to the edge...because it wasn't until I made it there that I realized that I didn't want to jump.

And all at once my world was saturated with brilliant hues again. Life is really what you make of it. This year, I am entering the Christmastime festivities with a very different outlook than I had last year.

It was in the second week of December, 2004, that the oncologist told Mom that if they didn't find an effective treatment, her prognosis was only two years. Miles spent the holiday in Colorado with his family, an event which, sadly, I missed because I felt an indescribable certainty that I needed to be with my mother last Christmas. It was a glum month, a glum holiday. Basically, it sucked. There was this heavy cloud of sorrow hanging over us...and even smiles seemed strained. "Is this our last Christmas together?" Every action, every word, was laced with the silent question. It hung upon the humidity of the emotion-clogged air and threatened to suffocate.

This year—my God—this year, we are on borrowed time with Mom. "Three months" came due at the end of August...we are at the end of December. Miles is no longer in my life—leastwise not in the same context. Yet, this year, the rapture pours over, and my heart has let flood my body with it. My eighth grade English teacher always told us that we weren't human beings, but rather, human becomings. I pray that I never stop becoming. I looked in the mirror a few weeks ago...and I saw an old friend: myself.