The First Thing I Learned
My mom died slowly, and at home.
She had a soft blue recliner that she sat in, below a skylight. Oxygen hissed into her canula, snaking from a noisy pump set to maximum. She struggled to catch a breath. Her lungs filled with water.
Cancer is terrible. The treatment for cancer is terrible-- a long path of ordeals. Bone marrow transplants, many rounds of chemo and radiation, near-remissions and heartbreaking relapses.
Cancer is something that happened to her. But death is something she did.
There was a hospital bed beside her chair. I slept there some nights, in her last few weeks. I remember one night, lying beside her as she struggled to breathe. The gap between her breaths grew impossibly wide. I could picture the tall mountain she was climbing. Death was a place she was going, but the path was unclear. Death was a thing she was doing-- the name of the journey and the destination. Death was something she was becoming. Eyes closed, I watched her struggle up the mountain. Footstep over footsep, loose shale skittering beneath her feet. Hatchbacks, tedious and mountain, like the steep side of the trail up Timponogos, made her toil indirectly but inexorably upward.
She was on the Great Mountain. At any moment she may reach its peak. Any moment.
The space between breaths grew wider, impossible peaks in the distance, one breath to the next. Will this breath be the last one? Will the silence stretch on? I fell asleep in an agony of waiting and pain. The next morning, she was still alive.
But a few days later she found the secret door in the mountainside. The peaks grew too far apart to reach. And she died.
The fact that she died was a nightmare. That she was gone-- it was an alchemical reaction, transmogrifying the garden of our family life into a scorched acid shell, a burnt out crucible. That we were now motherless, forever. That was unbearable.
But death itself, Death. That journey into the unknown. The tallest mountain. The hidden door. I did not hate it. I was in awe of it. It was like a God. I felt nothing but reverence and respect for that huge kingdom, that unimaginable journey I had half-dreamed. Death was the great transformation.
She had a soft blue recliner that she sat in, below a skylight. Oxygen hissed into her canula, snaking from a noisy pump set to maximum. She struggled to catch a breath. Her lungs filled with water.
Cancer is terrible. The treatment for cancer is terrible-- a long path of ordeals. Bone marrow transplants, many rounds of chemo and radiation, near-remissions and heartbreaking relapses.
Cancer is something that happened to her. But death is something she did.
There was a hospital bed beside her chair. I slept there some nights, in her last few weeks. I remember one night, lying beside her as she struggled to breathe. The gap between her breaths grew impossibly wide. I could picture the tall mountain she was climbing. Death was a place she was going, but the path was unclear. Death was a thing she was doing-- the name of the journey and the destination. Death was something she was becoming. Eyes closed, I watched her struggle up the mountain. Footstep over footsep, loose shale skittering beneath her feet. Hatchbacks, tedious and mountain, like the steep side of the trail up Timponogos, made her toil indirectly but inexorably upward.
She was on the Great Mountain. At any moment she may reach its peak. Any moment.
The space between breaths grew wider, impossible peaks in the distance, one breath to the next. Will this breath be the last one? Will the silence stretch on? I fell asleep in an agony of waiting and pain. The next morning, she was still alive.
But a few days later she found the secret door in the mountainside. The peaks grew too far apart to reach. And she died.
The fact that she died was a nightmare. That she was gone-- it was an alchemical reaction, transmogrifying the garden of our family life into a scorched acid shell, a burnt out crucible. That we were now motherless, forever. That was unbearable.
But death itself, Death. That journey into the unknown. The tallest mountain. The hidden door. I did not hate it. I was in awe of it. It was like a God. I felt nothing but reverence and respect for that huge kingdom, that unimaginable journey I had half-dreamed. Death was the great transformation.
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