The Way We Were
When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was an agent, on a top-secret quest to stop the mal-intentioned leader of a powerful nation from detonating a bomb or winning a war, completing the final step in a somehow lethal trade agreement. In my imagination, there was no evil too big overcome, no plot too complex to be thwarted, no genius too clever to be out-smarted. And I was always the one to stop him, to figure everything out at the last minute and save the world. As an eight-year-old, I saw the world in them and us, bad and good, black and white.
The first time my mom got a diagnosis, I was eleven. Cancer was something to be defeated, and to be defeated together. When she lost her hair, I viewed it as a setback. It was winning this battle, but we’d win the war. And then she was clean again, more tired and sadder, but safe. And then it came back, and kept coming back. The diagnoses piled upon each other, one after another, granting fleeting months of asylum during which we’d hope this was the last time, knowing in our hearts it wouldn’t be. But it always returned. For years, my dad and I held onto our finite hope, and to each other, telling ourselves one day this would all be over and she’d be given back to us, given back to herself. …show more content…
That she’d be able to walk, laugh and love like before. But like grains of sand, I watched my faith in the doctors and the medicine, and even in her, fall through my fingers.
The cancer attacked her breasts, her lymph nodes, her lungs, her brain. It waged its war in intangible ways too, claiming her her desire to get out of bed in the morning, her ability to drive, patience, sense of humor, self-control, and certain memories, here and there. These were its prisoners. And then my mom became one of them, another thing we’d lost to the cancer.
The dinner table became a minefield. The war was no longer us against the cancer, a team. It was me, alone, against my mom and the cancer, who had at some point become the same thing and stronger than me, and my dad next to me fighting the same fight, but separately. Knowing logically the cancer wasn’t her fault didn’t make anything better. The foolishly human half of me believed if she loved me enough she’d make it go away. That if she cared enough about me, she’d wake up one day and the cancer would be gone. When I was a kid, there was nothing too big that I couldn’t fix it, in my mind. I saw the world as a mixture of things I’d done and things I could do, or that someone older and smarter than me could do. I lived in absolutes: the good side could always win, and always would. Nothing was impossible, until the cancer. It was insurmountable, an obstacle I had no way of fixing. And then it wasn’t just not being able to fix the cancer but coping with the reality that not everything can be fixed. Sometimes the bad guys just win, no matter how hard you fight. “Dr. Silverman said we always work out because of our ability to talk.” We were separated by a wall, my parents and I. My dad’s words weren’t an apology, but he was saying sorry. My mom’s response was harder to make out, just a murmur, but then she was crying. “Oh, Kath,” my dad said, and I imagined him crossing the kitchen, hugging her, forgetting the problems between them. I stayed in the bathroom, washing my face. I turned the water to warm. It was too cold. I closed my eyes as I waited for their voices to quiet. My mom kept crying. My mother was beautiful. Her hair had been long, short, in-between, but always full, curly, dark. It fell around her face, framing the blue eyes we shared and prominent nose we didn’t. She had a long, honest face, and eyebrows that furrowed in sadness, in disappointment, raised in surprise or concern. She laughed infrequently but genuinely, and gave and loved with all of her. My mother was beautiful. The chemo room is perpetually filled with old people, sad and secure
When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was an agent, on a top-secret quest to stop the mal-intentioned leader of a powerful nation from detonating a bomb or winning a war, completing the final step in a somehow lethal trade agreement. In my imagination, there was no evil too big overcome, no plot too complex to be thwarted, no genius too clever to be out-smarted. And I was always the one to stop him, to figure everything out at the last minute and save the world. As an eight-year-old, I saw the world in them and us, bad and good, black and white.
The first time my mom got a diagnosis, I was eleven. Cancer was something to be defeated, and to be defeated together. When she lost her hair, I viewed it as a setback. It was winning this battle, but we’d win the war. And then she was clean again, more tired and sadder, but safe. And then it came back, and kept coming back. The diagnoses piled upon each other, one after another, granting fleeting months of asylum during which we’d hope this was the last time, knowing in our hearts it wouldn’t be. But it always returned. For years, my dad and I held onto our finite hope, and to each other, telling ourselves one day this would all be over and she’d be given back to us, given back to herself. …show more content…
That she’d be able to walk, laugh and love like before. But like grains of sand, I watched my faith in the doctors and the medicine, and even in her, fall through my fingers.
The cancer attacked her breasts, her lymph nodes, her lungs, her brain. It waged its war in intangible ways too, claiming her her desire to get out of bed in the morning, her ability to drive, patience, sense of humor, self-control, and certain memories, here and there. These were its prisoners. And then my mom became one of them, another thing we’d lost to the cancer.
The dinner table became a minefield. The war was no longer us against the cancer, a team. It was me, alone, against my mom and the cancer, who had at some point become the same thing and stronger than me, and my dad next to me fighting the same fight, but separately. Knowing logically the cancer wasn’t her fault didn’t make anything better. The foolishly human half of me believed if she loved me enough she’d make it go away. That if she cared enough about me, she’d wake up one day and the cancer would be gone. When I was a kid, there was nothing too big that I couldn’t fix it, in my mind. I saw the world as a mixture of things I’d done and things I could do, or that someone older and smarter than me could do. I lived in absolutes: the good side could always win, and always would. Nothing was impossible, until the cancer. It was insurmountable, an obstacle I had no way of fixing. And then it wasn’t just not being able to fix the cancer but coping with the reality that not everything can be fixed. Sometimes the bad guys just win, no matter how hard you fight. “Dr. Silverman said we always work out because of our ability to talk.” We were separated by a wall, my parents and I. My dad’s words weren’t an apology, but he was saying sorry. My mom’s response was harder to make out, just a murmur, but then she was crying. “Oh, Kath,” my dad said, and I imagined him crossing the kitchen, hugging her, forgetting the problems between them. I stayed in the bathroom, washing my face. I turned the water to warm. It was too cold. I closed my eyes as I waited for their voices to quiet. My mom kept crying. My mother was beautiful. Her hair had been long, short, in-between, but always full, curly, dark. It fell around her face, framing the blue eyes we shared and prominent nose we didn’t. She had a long, honest face, and eyebrows that furrowed in sadness, in disappointment, raised in surprise or concern. She laughed infrequently but genuinely, and gave and loved with all of her. My mother was beautiful. The chemo room is perpetually filled with old people, sad and secure