Last night I was flooded with a tsunami of emotions that seemed to come from the depths of my soul, unexpectedly, when I realized all my text messages had disappeared. Talk about attachment...My phone had been freezing and not sending messages all day, so last night I turned my phone off and restarted it. For some reason, right before I headed to bed, I looked at my phone and realized that all of my text messages were gone. INSTANT tears. I had never realized my attachment to my text messages, but in that instant I knew that the final text messages my mother had sent me were gone forever. I never got to reread them one last time. They were taken from me. A long lost memory and suddenly I can't even recall what some of her last messages were. Those words she last typed to me, erased from my phone and memory. Lately it seems all the memories I have of my mother, are fleeting, disappearing and hard to find in my mushy mama brain. When I realized all of my mother's text messages were gone, any grief that had been welling up inside of me the past few weeks breached the wall and flooded out. Leo found me suddenly bawling in the bathroom after putting Zennith to bed, and all I could say was "My phone deleted all my texts". I figured he thought I was crazy for being attached to my text messages, but he seemed to immediately know it was deeper than that. He instantly got online to seek a solution to recover them. I went to bed, admitting to myself maybe it was time I just let them go. Grief is a process that you are never prepared for, even though I had convinced myself I was ready. I knew my mother was dying. I knew it in May. For the first time since her diagnosis with cancer in 2013, I feared I would never get to look into her eyes or hug her when she left my car in Sacramento. My mother came to visit us when Zennith was two weeks old. Up until that week, we didn't know if she would be allowed to miss her treatments or be healthy enough to fly out. The cancer had spread (one tumor went from 2cm to 9 cm within three months after they started chemotherapy). The last time I had seen my mom was in January. We went home for the holidays, found out the sex of our baby, my mom surprised me with a baby shower days before Christmas, and then I ended up in bed for two weeks with bronchitis. My mom was so happy when she found out we were having a boy. But she was so sad when I was sick at Christmas, because deep down she knew it was her last holiday with us. She had been living with a small section of cancer for two years, and successfully living a healthy normal life for the second year by taking a few chemo pills every morning and night. The cancer was not shrinking, but it also was not effecting her or growing. The doctors decided to put her back on chemotherapy to try to shrink it. I shouted my opinions and unfortunately my mother trusted the doctors who convinced her to try chemo again. She started just after Christmas and by February the cancer was growing. They then turned to a new immunotherapy drug, which had not even been proven to work for ovarian cancer, and was highly contradicted for people with Crohn's Disease, which my mother had. They still decided to put her on this new drug and by April the tumor was 9cm and pushing on her bladder causing her to pass blood clots in her urine. She had surgery and stents put in which immediately caused her much pain. She often asked for new stents but the doctors refused. Unfortunately my mother lived all of May through July in excruciating pain from the stents. The day she had the stents changed, she had immediate relief. But this was the day after they told her that her liver was now 90% cancer and 4-5 times its normal size, therefore calling in hospice. Three months of pain which potentially could have been avoided if the doctors had switched them out in May. This pain caused her to lose appetite and not eat. Her body didn't get any nutrients. The back and forth of chemo and immunotherapy and back to chemo would be hard on a healthy body. Add to the fact that she could not eat from the pain of the stents, her body had absolutely no defense. A healthy liver turned full of cancer within one treatment of chemotherapy. My mother lived her final eight months as another test rat, proving that chemotherapy actually hurts the human body. As her daughter, I have thought this whole story through way too many times. Could I still have a mother, a grandmother for my baby, a support system for my family if the the doctors had just let her continue to take one pill every night? Could she have maintained a healthy, normal life even with a few small spots of cancer in her for a few more years if she had never gone back on chemotherapy, or tried immunotherapy? In case you didn't know, research has shown chemotherapy only works for 3 percent....THREE FUCKING PERCENT. Yes I said the F- word and if you are more upset by that than you are by the THREE FUCKING PERCENT then maybe you should stop reading. Cancer is a MULTI BILLION dollar industry and there's so much more to share but we can save it for another day.....Anger and frustration rage through my soul. I was robbed of having a grandmother for my son. And all because doctors make most of their pay from chemotherapy. Or maybe not...maybe this is just the divine timing and her soul is finally set free...Regardless, when my mom visited us in May, I knew it would be the last time I would see her up and about. She was so frail. I was so afraid she would die before our trip home at the end of July. I told Leo when she left that I was afraid she was going to die when we visited in August. And that is exactly what happened. Two days before our flight home, I got a text message from my dad as I anxiously awaited test results. "She's dying. They are calling hospice." Really? That news is going to come through a text message?! I was so mad I had to read that. Text messages are supposed to be a way to converse, but not a way to tell important news whether good or bad. Yet I found out my mother's time had come through a text message, and here I sit releasing my grief all because I lost my mother's final text messages. In an age of technology and everything at our fingertips, my emotions of anger, grief and sadness today are revolved around letters typed into a phone. But I have come to realize, the deleted messages can't take away anything. Even if my mother's love and touch seem so far away, so buried in my memories that I can't seem to find where they have been buried, they are still a part of me. And that won't ever be erased. My memories may seem blurry but perhaps it's because I am seeking to remember her....but I know they will surface in their own time. At a smell or a sight or a phrase, there will be my mother, in the forefront of my awareness. And that will never be deleted. So I would like to share some memories from my mom's visit in May. She toughed out a full day of car rides and flights so she could be with her newest grandchild. She put on a smile and gritted through the pain, so that she could embrace the joys of being a grandma. Tears filled her eyes when she first saw him. She was so excited, she sent me texts every minute as she anxiously awaited for us to pick her up. She couldn't get to the car fast enough to put her hands on her sweet angel.
We spent a few days at home so I could rest and mom helped me around the house and also napped and rested. We also spent a day at a local reservoir. Zennith got to put his feet in the water for the first time. At two and a half weeks old, he still hadn't had a bath. He immediately liked the water even though it was freezing cold! I could tell mom was uncomfortable but she did her best to enjoy the day. I was tired as a new mama, but I knew deep down I needed to enjoy these moments because I wouldn't get them again. So we enjoyed the sunshine and tried to have fun, considering what I suspected was looming ahead....Dad even climbed into the tree and mom stressed out that he would get stuck. He made it out safely. ;) It was good to see him expressing his child self again. He was a proud papa too all week. Enjoying our backyard full of pine and cedar trees, I don't think he ever wanted to leave. This was an escape from reality and their final vacation together. Mimi and Papa got to go to Zennith's first concert with us! We went to Strawberry Festival for a few hours and watched Rising Appalachia. This is a special memory... The first concert we attended with Zennith in my belly once he had grown ears was Rising Appalachia. Then it was his first concert outside my belly with Mimi. And just just a few weeks ago, Zennith got to hang out with the band where Daddy works and clearly enjoyed their concert the most thus far in his musical experience. I am glad she was a part of that musical memory. Time came for mom to head home. She sat for hours crying in her final times at our house. She kept saying how sad she was that she wasn't going to get to watch him grow up. I kept reassuring her that we would visit often and that she and dad could come out and visit again when she was feeling better. But I knew deep within my soul that I was really just trying to convince myself that this could be our reality. I knew why she was crying. I knew that she was afraid of all the things she would miss as her time on Earth was coming to an end. I knew that we both feared that she may never get the chance to hold Zennith again. But I tried my hardest to tell her we would all be ok and see each other often. I have never seen my mom cry so much. She always hid her emotions. But she couldn't hold back the tears this time. She crumbled. And I knew I was about to enter motherhood without my mentor to help me.
My mom insisted that I stay home with the baby and let Leo drive them to their hotel near the airport. She felt bad because Zen cried so much in the carseat. But I couldn't let her go, so I put the baby into the car and we rode together for an hour. When she got out of the car, I hugged her and told her to take care of herself until I would see her again. She held back tears, even though a few came out, and I will never forget that hug. Her frail backbones in my arms, her holding me a little longer than normal. When I got back into the car to head home I prayed I would see her again. And I did, but unfortunately my trip home two months later was to care take for her in her final three weeks. I realize I have avoided writing in this blog since May. I didn't want to admit the truth about my moms visit. I didn't want to write about the joys and struggles of becoming a new mama because the reality around it was drenched in the reality of death. I am blessed I was able to celebrate the birth of my first child with my mom. I got to watch her be so proud of me, but more so, so proud to be the grandma to our child. I got to send her pictures of my growing belly and admire the strength she had becoming my mother at the age of nineteen. I will write more about my mother and her final days with Zen, Leo and me when the time is right, but I feel so much better just having shared these moments. Yes my phone may have taken away my mom's final messages through text, but it can never take away the memories I hold deep in my heart, even if I can't remember all of them right now.
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February 2018
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