For my son

One day, when you can read, you will read these words.  I looked at your face as you watched her cough.  I have never seen your eyes so large or so black as you looked upon her beloved face.  For a moment, I wondered if you had seen that look on my face.  I have tried to conceal it from you.  You climbed into my arms and told me she’ll stay forever.  I wanted to believe you. 

Did you know that she was there the day you were born?  She watched you enter the world and cried with relief when you finally took your first breath.  She said you were the gift that God had given her before taking her own mother away. 

You might not remember but she taught you your first words despite what your father says.  You spoke her tongue first before you uttered a single word of English.  She taught you how to love real food when you were but a baby.  Her arms held you and loved you every minute you had in her presence.  You were her “Dadabhai.”  She wanted to take you to Disney world.  I’ll have to do that for her now.  She was supposed to make you monster pajamas.  I’ll have to figure out how. 

The other day you said to me that you wished we had seen her house first.  But I know you wouldn’t love it half as much if it wasn’t her house.  As much as you’re going to miss walking into her home and going to the kitchen with her to get something to eat, I’m going to miss walking into her house and just calling out her name.  I hope the house holds enough good memories to wipe away all the bad ones you’ll have.  She’s not only leaving me, but she’s leaving you too.  She was my mother before she was ever your Dida.  May you always remember how much she loved you during the short span of time that she was in your life. 

Even as my connection to her is slowly being severed, know that you have been my life line in all this, you and your brother.  Your laughter and love is the only thing that’s keeping me from drowning. 

As I write this, I’m unsure how to tell you that your grandmother is going to leave you to go be with Jesus forever.  How do I explain that to you?  I’m sorry.  It wasn’t in any of those parenting manuals that I didn’t read.   

For my bleeding heart

You once told me that I wrote too much with my heart and not enough with my head.  For the record, my head seems quite adept at slashing opening my heart and leaving it bleeding across the page.  Once I tried to speak words which couldn’t be uttered.  You gave them back to me but they were false.  No lie, lies within these words.  I pined for you, despaired over you.  I still wonder if you ever even knew.  Boys usually don’t care about such things. 

You took one look at green eyes that never were and seduced me into this skin I now wear.  I’m older, perhaps wiser but in turn, they have all left an imprint in my heart.  There imprints are the twisted ugly scars I carry, buried in my chest, where no eyes will ever see, ears will ever hear, or which lips shall never speak. 

Some take a knife to the flesh.  Like the leeches of old, perhaps they believe the letting of your blood will let the bad humors out of your body.  Or perhaps they are addicted to the pain; the sensation of the blade cutting into their flesh and the warm blood seeping out, offers them a kind of release.  I’m not so deep. 

The release of my pain is simple.  I let my fingers dance wildly across the keyboard in tune to a music only they can hear.  My eyes take in the words that appear on the blank page.  My head is in command of my fingers.  My eyes are the captives, helplessly enthralled, unable to turn away as my heart is torn to shreds over and over again.  The blood staining the pages run red until the words take shape and become little black lines. 

My pain, written for your viewing pleasure.  My agony, submitted for your scrutiny.  Will you take out this knife embedded in my heart?  I’m not quite sure how it should be done.

When words are more or less enough

I had a good workout this morning.  I ran faster than before, pushing myself just a little harder, to go just a little farther.  Ran into someone I knew at the gym this morning.  Recognized each other by face and then caught up by filling in the gaps for everything else.  She remembered by dad.  I told her about my mom.  From the words I used so causally, she asked if it was stage 4.  I simply said yes.  My father said last night that sometimes words just don’t help.

My mom is having harder time breathing and using the oxygen more than when she came home last Thursday.  Her coughs are more violent.  She says she is not in pain.  My dad says, what can he do to help beyond what he’s doing?  It’s better for her to be quiet.  She said her children know they are loved; she doesn’t need to say anything more.  She said it’s hard and she’s trying her best to fight.  What she didn’t add is that it’s a losing battle. 

I went to see her last night with my oldest son in tow.  I started to cry and he climbed up on my lap and hugged me and said, she’s going to stay forever.  I wanted to believe him.  It would be so damn easy.  I wanted so badly to believe him. 

Then there’s the coughing.  Her coughs were so hard and violent to behold that I just stared at my son’s face.  His eyes opened wide and turned black.  I could see the concern in his face.  The faces of children are so honest compared to ours.  When it was time to leave, he had to have a drink.  I refused.  I started to do the countdown but then thought better of it and just picked him up. 

I told him calmly that yes she was sick but she was not going to go back to the hospital so he could go home and come back the next day to see her.  They delivered a hospital bed and oxygen and a whole bunch of other stuff so she wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital.  Yes, she was very sick.  I didn’t say she’s going to get sicker.  He hasn’t been able to hug her since before his birthday.  I sat him down next to her on the bed so she could hold him.  He wouldn’t look at her.  I know how he felt; I just have more words to express it than him. 

It’s tough being the child watching your parent slowly lose a battle they can’t win.  It’s hard coming to terms with the inevitable loss of a parent.  As fortunate as I am to get this time to say good bye to my mom, I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of her absence from my life.  It’s harder still being the parent, explaining the inevitable loss to you child.  I wish I could protect him from this loss.  As his father said, it’s our job to not protect him, but to help him get through this loss and learn to cope with it. 

In short, my job sucks.

Chicken Liver of Birthdays Past

My brother and my son were born exactly 25 years and 51 weeks apart.  Their birthdays fall on the same day, exactly a week apart.  While I was pregnant with my oldest son, I kept telling my brother that my son was going to steal his birthday.  My son was considerate enough to arrive a week before his Mama’s birthday.  Why am I focusing on birthdays?  It’s easier to focus on the events that we celebrated before heading down this road we’re on.

For as long as we can remember, ever since our oldest was born, my other half and I have wanted to have his birthday party out of doors.  His first birthday, we gave in and let his grandparents throw him a huge birthday (which he slept through).  It was indoors.  His second birthday was also indoors.  I believe it was held at his grandparents along with his third birthday.  My mother had her first surgery right before his second birthday so we put off celebrating his and his Mama’s birthday until after her surgery.  She put off her second surgery until after their birthdays. 

I think my son’s third birthday might have been pretty uneventful.  His fourth birthday was at Chuck-E-Cheese.  It really is a place where a kid can be a kid and sometimes, adults too.  He had a chance to play with his grandparents, including his Dida.  I guess I should translate the names I’m using.  Maternal uncle is called Mama and maternal grandmother is called Didima.  I called my maternal grandmother Dida and passed the name onto my sons.  Except now I realize that the baby will probably never learn to call his grandmother Dida.  She’ll just be a picture he vaguely remembers. 

This year, for my son’s fifth birthday, at the last minute his father and I decided to have a party at the park.  He was getting ready to finish up his first year of school and wanted all his school friends there.  It was the only safe course of action as my mother wasn’t exactly in the best of health.  She had been looking very ill but I didn’t say anything.  I was worried.  I should have said something but I know no one wanted to hear my worst fears voice aloud.  This has always been the way in my family.  I find it very annoying. 

My mom went to the park briefly.  She stayed for a bit.  She fussed over everything.  I was impatient with her.  She eventually left to go home.  She hadn’t been eating well and she had been feeling very poorly besides.  I told my worry to shut the f*^& up.  Literally.  Sometimes, we should say whatever we want and the consequences be damned.  To hell with stepping on people’s toes. 

On the Thursday before my brother’s birthday, she went to the emergency room.  She had spent the night vomiting and my father took her to the urgent care center the next morning.  They told him to take her to the emergency room.  She had pneumonia and they put her on antibiotics while waiting for various other test results.  But as it turned out and looked, it was more than just pneumonia.  The word cancer got injected into air turning it toxic.  I held my breath and let it go finally.  My worst fear was staring me in the face.  I knew that damn thing was bound to rear its head sooner or later. 

They wanted more tests.  It was the first time I ever spent the night at the hospital.  You should know that I hate hospitals.  My second son was born in a hospital.  Since I was not the hospital’s patient, I left soon as the midwife cleared me to leave.  My son was safe in the hospital’s care.  After all, his brother spent two nights in their NICU when he was born.  That’s a story for another blog.  I spent the night sleeping in a chair in my mother’s room.  Somehow, having me there with her cheered her up enormously.  In retrospect, I’m glad I got that moment.  It was the beginning of something wonderful.  While I didn’t stay overnight for my son, I have spent at least three nights in the hospital with my mom. 

What makes me mad is when they saw the scans and decided it’s probably the cancer, they stopped treating her for the pneumonia.  My internet research into cancerous growth in the lung revealed that pneumonia is often a common thing when there are cancerous growths in the lungs.  If they had treated it, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten as weak and could have started chemo.  Maybe not.  It’s too damn late to speculate. 

She was released from the hospital the first time around on her son’s birthday.  She came home and I went to see her.  It was the first time ever in my life I cooked with my mother.  She cooked all my brother’s favorite foods.  She made curried chicken liver, hilsha fish in mustard sauce, shrimp malaikari, and pullau rice.  That night I learned why my curried chicken liver never quite tasted like hers.  She told me that when she was gone, I would have to make my brother his favorite foods for his birthday.  I didn’t ask who was going to make my favorite foods for my birthday. 

There are a lot of things I didn’t ask.  Who’s going to buy me clothes because sooner or later, I’m going to need new clothes?  For 36 years, she has supplied me with clothes.  Who’s going to make my favorite food for my birthday?  Better yet, who’s going to remember all those important dates of my life?  I remember how I spent my 33^rd birthday at the hospital with her when she was first admitted.  The day before I was told she had cancer.  The day after she had her first surgery.  Really mother!!  No wonder I’m so dramatic.  I had to get it from somewhere. 

Last night I cooked curried chicken liver.  I used a bit too much ground spices so there was a lot of sauce.  But I remembered to add her secret ingredient.  It tasted just like hers.  Except all that sauce.  So I guess I’ll be delivering a container to my brother every birthday.  When he was born, I didn’t know that I had signed up to be her surrogate when she would make her final bow.  So the only question is, who’s going to be my surrogate when she goes?  

My chest hurts.  My head hurts.  My shin and ankle hurts from running.  I’ve started working out.  I want to give myself a chance to be here for my kids.  On this side of the fence, I get what it feels like to slowly have your mother slip away from you.  Some are not so fortunate as to get to say good bye.  So I’m burying my anger, hiding my sorrow behind a smile.  There’s time enough for that later.  Right now, I’m going to console myself with the memory of cooking my brother’s birthday dinner a few months ago and nurse that memory with bites of this delicious curried chicken liver which reminds me so much of the one mom makes.