Frustrations of another kind

As you know, my mother is battling throat cancer. It's been a long, arduous battle with little to no real break or remission. What a scary scenario you're faced with as you age, the prospect of death and what it means to those you leave behind as well as yourself.

What they say is true. There really are no guarantees in life and everything comes with a price. The years she spent fighting the scale and the pills she took to help her along, the drinking, the all weekend long partying, the smoking. The smoking. When you look at her habits in her 20's, 30's and some of her 40's one has to wonder what took so long for her to fall ill. And yet someone else who lives exactly the same lifestyle would continue doing so well into their adult lives and never suffer as much as a persistent cough. Funny how it all works. The goose is picked and the chase to freedom begins.

She's enduring another round of radiation this month. This will be her 2nd time. A different kind of treatment, a more advanced and current method that helps save other "healthy" parts of her from being damaged without need. This is after she had a permanent hole cut in her throat, her voice box yanked and a two month stay in the hospital. And we're not even counting the surgeries prior to these. She's barely had time to fully recover and yet another attack has been planned. The prognosis looks good since this radiation is "precautionary". Whatever that means. One has to wonder, though, with all the times we've heard "this ought to cover it", if this will really be the last jaunt up victory mountain. Will it be a battle won or has she suffered all this for naught?

She doesn't sound the same, she doesn't look the same and her life will undoubtedly never be the same. Will my children be afraid of her? I'm scared at the thought of the rejections from them because we aren't close enough and they have never been around her enough to know her and build a bond except for S. I would hate to see the look on her face if that happens.

I hate what has happened to her. It isn't fair for us to lose our father at such a young age and now be faced with our mother's mortality as well. I feel like I've been waiting for the wrong mother to die. Just as I come to a place of peace with the end of my grandmother's life (I see her as my mother since she raised me from infancy) I am now living with the fear that my birth mother will be gone as well.

It sounds funny to say "waiting" for your mother to die and I certainly haven't been watching the years go by while the haunting thought plagued my mind. It is just that the mother that raised me was always old and feeble in my mind. She was always in pain with rheumatoid arthritis and just seemed closer to death most of my life than the mothers of my peers. I'm not looking for my birth mother to give up and fade away all that quickly either but one can't help but feel the last straw could be right around the corner. You just can't be too sure or too confident when it comes to cancer. It has fooled many people and ripped the carpet out from underneath the healthiest and youngest alike.

So we wait for her to recover and gain some sort of life back. I sit and listen to her husband's bleeding heart because of the hardships the cancer has caused and it is frustrating because I want so badly to take it away, to push rewind and give her a different deck of cards. Nothing I can say or do takes away the depression that envelopes you as you go through such a life changing event. I have no way of relating on a real level and I can't pull either one of them out of the trenches to safer ground.

I try to stay positive and hope for renewal in their lives. I pray for a flood to come and wash away the last 4 years of their trials and let the sun shine on their faces once again without worry. I pray that my babies know their grandma and aren't frightened by the way she sounds. I pray that we all get more time with our mother, but most of all I pray that she gets more time feeling happy. It has been far too long.