Cancer, You Big Ass Cliche

You know how someone is all, "My mom died _____ years ago, and I still pick up the phone to call her" and you're all "I'm so sorry, really" but deep down inside a little voice says, "Wow, cliche much? I mean, really. 'I still pick up the phone to call her' GOD."  Well, I'm here to tell you, I still pick up the phone to call her, and it hurts like a motherfucker.

But therein lies the problem when your dad died of pancreatic cancer when you were 19 and your mom died of lung cancer.  Did they smoke?  Indeed.  Drink? Well, duh. This shit has cliche written all over it.  "I'm so very sorry for your loss. But please, PLEASE don't write about it.  Parents.  Dead.  Cancer.  I feel like I've read this story before.  Was it published in the (name some low level preferably online journal)? No?"

I coach pre-med students on how to strengthen their personal statements for their applications for medical school.  Let me tell you, they all have the same story.  Did or didn't want to be a doctor as a child.  Did or didn't change their mind based on some miraculous high school or college science teacher.  Add quick point about tenacity despite grades not showing it, and oh, did I mention I FUCKING LOVE POOR PEOPLE.  Done.  "Everyone's story is pretty much the same," I tell them.  "Where you'll win is in the details.  Give them an image, something to remember."

So, I'll give you the images.  My mom, no longer recognizable, I mean when the fuck did she get old and check the mirror, did it happen to me too? In the hospital bed we set up in my sister's bedroom, the clot on her leg (not what's killing her, or wait, is it?) giant and black.  Bald.  Gray. All of her, of course.  My daughter, sleeping in a chair next to my mom's bed for three nights, throwing a blanket over her head when my mom wakes up screaming, "I'm dying! Jesus Christ, someone help me, I'm dying!"  The time I almost punched those fucking doctors in the hospital.  Don't give me your chin up, circle of life bullshit.  Maybe you see people die everyday, but I'm telling you, none of them mattered before this one.  The time my sister didn't almost bite my other sister days before my mom slipped away in the mid morning, surrounded by the hospice nurse, various family members, but not me. (Here's something you can't ever know-- when they came to tell me to come, that something was wrong with her breathing, I brushed my hair.  Quickly.  But I brushed it.  Because I was in that last days place where I thought, well, I might not get another chance to brush my hair. At the time maybe I thought this was just another step toward the end.  Not the end.  Not THE END.  By the time I got there she was gone.)

Oh, there's more.  There's the way she touched my face and said, "You're the best." There's sitting in my sister's bedroom with my ma when she was asleep, holding her hand and being quiet with her.  There's her phone call when she told me the cancer had spread and the doctors were saying six months.  "We need to make sure we buy the baby some summer clothes!" knowing she would be gone by summer.

But there's also the way that when I tried to joke with her she was mean and said, "Not now, not now, OK?"  I want to say, "NO, it's not OK.  It's NOT OK AT ALL.You're fucking dying and now you're dead and I can't fucking BELIEVE you did this to me.  The LEAST you could do is laugh at me when I joke with you because you are taking everything away from me.  So fuck you and your stupid lung cancer and your chemo and your dying.  I'm LEAVING."

But I can't, because when you're dying you're always leaving first and you always win the fight. Gah, anger.  Denial. Cliche cliche cliche.