What to get the mom who has everything…including cancer.
I’m having a hard time knowing what to get my mom this mother’s day. My mom’s got it all. She has a great wardrobe she can no longer wear, lots of pots and pans she can’t use, jewelry that no longer fits or is appropriate, books that no longer keep her attention, so many arts and crafts that she can’t understand, enough pillows and blankets, plenty of food and flowers…and a whole lot of cancer. Everywhere. In her back. In her skull. Maybe her brain, who knows…
Friends ask me how my mom is and I want to say, “She’s dying.” But I can’t. That’s not what my mother would want and I can’t help but hear her own words in my ear: “I’m good, Meg.”
I stop by when I can, which is not often enough, and I ask her how she is. Every time I do this, don’t ask me why. Maybe because I like the response, “I’m good, Meg.” I’m frustrated, angry, and impatient about work, the kids, the dog and cats, the everything there is to do…and she’s ‘good.’
When I visit I try to think of anything to tell her that I may have missed the last time. I tell her how the kids are doing in school and what funny thing they said the other day. I ask her questions that I think she might remember the answers to: “How do you make pea soup?” “What was the name of that guy that was in that play you directed…?” “Who has come to visit you today?” “What did you have for lunch?” I try to stay away from topics such as shopping or what show I’m going to see, my plans for the weekend or what restaurant I visited last, what book I’m reading or what project I’m working on. These, I think are what she misses most. Being confined in her house in a hospital bed affords a lot of luxuries like having my dad, God bless him, wait on her hand and foot but doesn’t allow going out to eat, going for a car ride, going to see a play…going anywhere.
My brothers don’t seem to have the same problem coming up with conversation. They can talk about sports and weather and work forever it seems. But I’m her daughter. Her only one. And that’s different somehow. Somehow it makes me think of what I would want if I were in her place. How I would want my kids to act? It reminds me that I’m a mom too and that there’s no other person in the world that can take the place of your mom. And that’s scary to think about both as a mom and someone who’s losing her mom.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” I ask because I can’t think of anything else to say. This one she always answers the same “Do for me what I would do for you.” Boy, that’s hard. She would come visit me every day. She would know, somehow, what I needed without having to ask. She would be accommodating to the point of annoyance. She would cry. And she would never give up on me.
I think I just answered my own question.
Happy Mother’s Day
