Feathers

I need to talk about my feelings. 

Just as I posted about the realities of my pregnancies, the birth of my daughter, and the vulnerability that comes with the postpartum period, I want to write to you now about death. Birth and death have become so removed from our everyday lives in this postmodern age that they are now taboo. It’s strange for me to write about (It feels a bit like using your non dominant hand for a simple task) and I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for you to read about. Nevertheless, birth and death are the opposing forces that keep the perpetual motion machine of life spinning. Willingness to explore them helps me to remain grateful and be present. It also opens up an opportunity for connection through discussion. If this is too much for you right now, that’s ok. Tap out. If you want to be with me in another very human moment, let’s carry on. 

My mother is dying. Well, she’s been dying since 2015, but now it’s really happening. She is going. 

Death is both a familiar friend and foe to me, as a nurse. I can see it lurking at every patient’s bedside, watching me work. It respects me and my efforts to stave it off as much as I respect when it’s time to stand down and let it take over. At that point we work together, and my job changes from thwarting death to ensuring it does its own job properly. We keep each other in check, I suppose. Of all my tasks in my job, caring for the dying and the dead is the most precious and sacred. 

I have also seen friends and more distant family members die, but this is different - this is my mother. The feelings I’ve been experiencing since she was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 have run the gamut. There’s only so much capability I’ve had to support her due to me having a career and a child in school across a continent and a major body of water, but I’m trying to tell myself that I’ve done what I could, including uprooting my family while in the third trimester of pregnancy to be in LA for six months to see my mother through more surgery and radiation. The logistical nightmare of arranging health insurance for three people and an unborn baby, immigration procedures for my husband, getting a car, enrolling my 6 year old in school, giving birth, and caring for a newborn all while looking after my mother was absolutely worth the stress. I just hope it was also worth it for her. I hope it was good enough. I hope I have been good enough. 

This worry that my distance after returning to the U.K. on New Year’s day has been detrimental is playing on my mind. Should we have stayed? Logically I know we couldn’t have, but grief isn’t a logical process. 

What if she dies before I fly out next week, which is the soonest I was able to arrange? Would my absence during her final moments have contributed to her suffering? What if she doesn’t die before I fly out next week? Would holding on until I arrive have contributed to her suffering? My dad tells me not to feel guilty because there’s no winning in this situation, that I’ve done what I could. I hope I can show myself the same generosity someday. 

My thoughts are at once chaotic and cyclical. I can’t seem to get them under control. If you could see into my head, you’d find my speeding thoughts like a flock of birds circling in a giant maelstrom of a murmuration over my head, while I jump up and down making useless attempts to grab them. I manage to come away with a handful of feathers now and again. I’ve been finding feathers everywhere. They’re in my hair, my pyjamas, my baby’s crib. I’ll manage to start a meal but lose my appetite when I find one in my food. Maybe if I keep them all I could build a set of wings to help carry me forward, but my mom always scolded me as a child if I tried to pick up a fallen feather. ‘That’s dirty! The bird could have a disease!’ I’ll just have to walk. 

And my children. I’m not sure I’m being a very good mom, myself, at the moment. I worry that my husband is having to to bear an unfair share of the labour while I struggle. How do I help my son develop a healthy attitude toward death without traumatising him? Somehow I’ll need to find the fortitude to be in my grief while maintaining balance for his sake. He is wise beyond his years and able to contextualise things that many adults cannot, but the price he pays for his brilliance is perilous sensitivity. That brilliance comes from my father, and my son looks so much like him - the blond haired, blue eyed carbon copy of my dad. It delights me to no end that my boy inherited my dad’s genius and my husband’s tender heart. He is perfect. My daughter is still a baby and I thank all the stars above that my mother got to see her. She looks just like me. When I look at her I feel like I’m seeing myself through my mother’s eyes and it’s stunning. It’s like facing two mirrors in front of each other to create an infinity tunnel. This afternoon she napped in my arms and I had to stifle my sobs to avoid waking her. I am afraid for my kids. I hope I can carry out  this aspect of parenting right. 

There are periods of time throughout the day when I feel ok. I’ll go for my usual morning jog, cook lunch, the usual. And then, without warning, a wave of dread will roll through my body in the form of nausea. It stops me in my tracks and I flinch - one of the birds must have flown into me. After a moment of being frozen to the spot, I’ll give myself a little push and carry on. It feels like forcing yourself awake to end a bad dream. Only this isn’t a dream, Dorothy. Kansas is FUBAR. There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home anymore because home is no place.

Despite all of this, the overarching truth is that my grief is and will pale in comparison to my grandmother’s - a Holocaust survivor who saw her loved ones killed in a genocide, then lost my grandfather to cancer when my mother and uncle were still very young, and now has to bury her daughter in her old age. It is unfathomable and I pray to G-d Phil and I never know such pain. The honest truth is that I dread my grandmother’s suffering more than saying goodbye to my mom. I am angry and I am terrified. 

Blessedly, my mother is beloved by many friends and family members who have rallied in the most awesome way. 

My sister and mother-in-law are steadfast wonders. My husband is my shelter and has championed my mother in extraordinary ways. Comfort lies in community. What people can do for each other when shit gets real is incredible. In a gesture of true love, my mother-in-law flew out to LA alone today, before I’m able to, to help my sister with our mother’s care. When I do travel to LA next week with my husband and the children in tow, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend will be joining us. My mother-in-law is a retired nurse sister-in-law-to-be is a healthcare assistant. Between the three of us we should I be able to provide my mother with the best care imaginable during the especially delicate final stage. If we arrive in time. The rolling dread again. What if?What if. 

If only. 

Any small amount of help gives us as a family a little more space to enjoy whatever time is left with my mom. Friends, especially, have done things big and small to take a few worries away. And, boy, my mother’s illness sure did reveal true friends quickly. The people who don’t really care made themselves scarce immediately, and as disappointing as that has been, I’m grateful it separated the wheat from the chaff. Good riddance to bad rubbish. 

I am wrapping the love of the good people in my world around me like a protective quilt. If I can’t make myself wings, I can walk through anything with this sweet shield. And though I have to bid farewell to my mother soon while she and I and my sister are still so young, as you and I and everyone else have to bid farewell to each other eventually, the light at the end of the tunnel of grief for me is knowing I can repay this kindness in the future. I will honour my mother’s memory by promising this: If it’s within my power help, I will help. But for now, I need to be in my feelings, and I thank you for being with me so I’m not alone in them.