 this pain is not like other pains
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May. 14th, 2018 @ 09:21 am 
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So... yeah, this needs a cut tag.
So LeVar Burton posted on twitter about how hard his first Mother's Day since his mother died was.
Fair. Reasonable. I burst into tears.
I have a highly unusual perspective on this.
My mother is alive. I last saw her a few weeks ago because my asthma kicked in hard, the city is smoky with controlled burns, I haven't been leaving the house.
I have also watched my mother die.
Same mother.
When I was in my late teens, she was sick. Very sick.
One morning, I was in the car with my dad. We were on the way to his work, where he'd get out, I'd put my P-plates on the windows, and I'd take the car for the day so I could go to classes and do the grocery shopping and try to cook dinner that I could pack in a box for him to eat in the car on the way from where I picked him up at work to the hospital to visit my mother.
This was routine. More often than would be ideal, I didn't manage the dinner part, and we'd see if the hospital cafe still had something that would function as a meal. Often when I did cook dinner, I packed my own too, and after he finished eating his, at a traffic light we'd jump out, whip around, pull the P-plates off the windows, switch drivers, and I'd eat my dinner while he drove the rest of the way.
That morning, his phone rang. I answered, because he was driving.
It was the hospital. They knew we visited my mother every evening, from as soon as we could get there after Dad finished work to the close of visiting hours.
That day, they told us we should come see her immediately, because, they said, as tactfully as possible, if we didn't come in the morning, we might be too late.
I don't remember how I conveyed this to my father. I remember he drove like a maniac to get to the hospital. I remember not having a problem with that.
We got to the hospital, and my mother was alive. I don't remember what the doctors or nurses said. I don't remember what my father said or did, at that point.
I remember sitting next to my mother's bed, holding her hand. It was cool and dry. She was awake. I talked to her.
Years later, we talked about that morning. My mother was surprised to learn we'd visited that day because we'd been told she was probably dying. She had no idea. So apparently, Dad and I both faked good cheer pretty well, since my mother just thought we had decided to drop by on a whim.
We stayed for hours, until the midday no-visitors period began and she was still alive.
I spent those hours in a curious agony. I was trying to cram those hours with every moment of this is my mother that I could, trying to take her in, fit enough of her into that time to last me the rest of my life, knowing that it was impossible, that I wasn't ready to be without her.
At the same time, I was trying desperately not to remember anything. Not to let that room be what imprinted on my memory. I didn't want to remember my mother as the withered thing in the bed. She looked older, then, than she does even now. Around that time a nurse assumed my father was her son, and they're five months apart in age but she looked more than old enough to be his mother.
I didn't want my memory of my mother to smell like hospital. I know everyone hates the smell of hospitals but if you haven't spent a lot of time on the major abdominal surgery wards, where the disinfectant and sterility smells are overlaid with the painfully organic tones, that hint of blood and raw meat and faeces, if you haven't sat, smelling that, as you watch someone you love die... I suspect you don't hate that smell as much as I do.
So I spent hours simultaneously trying to absorb every moment, and to block every moment as it happened.
And then we left.
I spent the day numbly waiting for my father to call and tell me she was gone. I don't remember much else of what I did.
We went back that evening. She was still alive. Her blood pressure had come up a bit. Her vital signs had rebounded from "will die at any moment" to "could die, might not!"
She kept improving. There were setbacks. I can't remember whether this all happened before or after her last sojourn in ICU.
She got better.
She's okay now. I worry about her, but she's doing well - she's pretty healthy, she rides a motorscooter again and she loves it, she's retired, she's pretty happy. I mean, right now, she's healthier than I am. She's loving and wonderful.
I'm glad.
But here's the thing.
I already know what it feels like to watch her dying.
I've seen people say, "You can't imagine what it's like to watch someone you love die."
They are correct, if you've never been through it.
I have watched my mother dying. I have kept vigil at her bedside, glancing at the monitors. When she closed her eyes, exhausted by minutes of interaction, I held her hand and looked between her face and the monitors, trying to remember/not remember her all at the same time, waiting for her to slip away from me forever.
There've been times in my life when my mother was literally the only human being who was kind to me.
(My dad included, but it's not entirely his fault; there's an antihistamine medication that does something weird to his brain chemistry, and turns him into a raging asshole like you would not believe. He does not take that antihistamine any more, and never will, because he has no memory of his awfulness, but my parents adore each other and have been happily married for over forty years now, so when my mother says sweetly that if he takes that medication again he will no longer be married, his choice, he acknowledges that no, we are not kidding. That is literally the only thing on which my mother has ever so much as hinted at the possibility that she would even contemplate leaving him. It was that bad.)
And, you know, she's my mother. If that isn't a big deal then either the mother or the child is pretty completely awful.
She recovered. She chafed at how ridiculously overprotective Dad and I were for a while, because we treated her like she was made of the most delicate of spun glass, and still complained at her fifteen years later for the time she did something we thought she shouldn't have done because ACTUALLY SHE REALLY SHOULDN'T HAVE and we were entirely right, and by the way, Mum, if you should happen to read this, WE'RE STILL RIGHT. I don't care if you used the skateboard, EVEN TOUCHING THAT SKATEBOARD IS NOT A THING YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE, FRANKLY, because I'm pretty sure you had to go under my bed or something to FIND it, and "I moved a large household appliance through several rooms and over a step" is not made better by "but I used this elderly skateboard to do it". Five points for ingenuity, still MINUS A THOUSAND for common sense.
Ahem.
Dad doesn't get to yell at her for that any more because he did something even stupider, but I have not ceded that moral high ground, I just yell at him for his stupid too now.
But here's the thing:
Time still passes, and people are still people.
That was a sucky time in my life, and I am so, so grateful that I still have my mother. I still needed her, I really did. I am aware that I am blessed to still have her at 37.
But I also have a deep, deep dread, because I have watched my mother dying, but she did not die, so what I fear is the possibility that I'll have to do it again.
I don't think it's something that gets easier with practice.
I am protective of my mother. I worry about her and am concerned for her sometimes to an extent she finds slightly exasperating. I think the thing is that I love her, as any worthwhile child of a worthwhile mother does, but I am in the unusual position of still having her around while knowing how much it hurts to lose her.
She is, now, not allowed to die, because I say so.
But, mutual friends, if that should happen? Give some love to Vel and Chas, because they are going to be picking pieces of me off the floor.
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