She will also, if all goes according to plan, be start treatment for the lung cancer that was discovered in July. We won’t go into the back story on why it has taken this long to get treatment started; all I’m going to say is welcome to Canadian healthcare.
I want to bake her cake, and make her favourite meal. Shower her with lovely gifts and have a big to-do for her. That’s what I want. But that’s not what she wants. She doesn’t want us to make a big deal for her birthday. From the way she talks about it, I think she would prefer if we just ignored it and pretended it was just like any other day.
I get it. How is she supposed to celebrate knowing this could be her last birthday? How do you smile and eat cake and ice cream and oo and ah over gifts when you are facing your own mortality? I don’t know the answer to that. All I know how to do is to keep living. One day at a time, keep on keepin’ on. And today, my mother-in-law is alive, and I want to celebrate that. I want her to know how much we all love her, and how important she is to us.
It’s a constant balancing act. Respecting her wishes, while working to help her stay positive. It feels like she is trying to pull away and shut us out. How do I keep my arms wrapped around her and my foot jammed in the door at the same time, without making her resent me? She doesn’t get to push us all away. She doesn’t get to shut us out. I’ll respect her wishes ‘til the cows come home, but she’s stuck with us, we’re her family. Maybe I should just make her a cake and decorate the top with "fuck cancer". It's probably a more honest sentiment than "happy birthday nana".
Scott and I have been making a concerted effort to keep things light and carefree at home, despite the underlying stress and sadness that we feel about his mom. Max and Cameron are too young to understand what is going on with their Nana. They are too young to understand how sick she is.
My kids are way smarter than I give them credit for.
This past month Cameron has really struggled in the mornings. I’m talking huge meltdowns, kicking, screaming, and throwing anything she can get her hands on. It would break my heart if it didn’t stress me out so much. This little girl, she has a set of lungs that would make Jessye Norman proud. On the days when Nana is not up to coming over, Cam asks “where’s Nana? I want Nana!”. I am honest with her, and I say “Nana’s not feeling well, she is at home resting”. Cameron seems to understand what this means, and she nods and repeats “Nana not feeling well, she sleeping”. At night Cameron doesn’t want to go to bed and the theatrics continue. But I get it. She intrinsically feels that something is wrong and wants to just “be” with Scott and me. I don’t blame her for that (though I do need her to get some sleep and give me some down time).
Max has been very whiney lately. It’s hard to know what is causing this with all the changes he is dealing with. His sleep has been inconsistent, and he has been requiring a lot of sensory input to self-regulate. He’s not sure what to think when I pick him up at the end of the day instead of his Nana and Bumpa. What’s interesting is that even with all the chaos, he is making a tonne of progress. Over the past month he has started using the toilet for BMs consistently (seriously, this is a HUGE deal – it is zero fun cleaning up the poopy butt of a 4.5 year old). He has started requesting to go to the toilet as well (instead of us having to prompt him 100% of the time). I can’t remember the last time he had an accident from a #1 perspective either. We’ve also been hearing a lot more words and short sentences, like “I love timbits!” and “I want more toast”. Amazing stuff when you consider where he started.
The challenge through all of this is that it isn’t going to get better anytime soon. Scott and I are doing our best to hold it down while also being supportive of his parents, dealing with our own sadness individually, staying connected as a couple, all the while making sure Cam and Max are getting everything they need (and that nobody gets forgotten to get picked up at the end of the day!). It’s a lot.
I try to stay focused on the fact that this is not a unique experience. I’ll admit that some days it seems like we are the only ones in the world who are going through this, (but that is so far from the truth I am embarrassed to even admit that I’ve felt that way for even a second).
It’s the cycle of life.
I just wish we had more time with Lorraine.
I wish she didn’t have to suffer.
I wish she could see Cam's first dance class.
I wish she could see all the hard work she has put into Max come to fruition as he grows up into a fine young man.
For someone of such small physical stature she will leave a huge hole in our family.
I used to think that the worst kind of pain was heart break. And for sure, heart break is terrible. But in time, you can recover from heart break. You can heal and find new love.
In actuality, the worst pain in the world is watching someone you love suffer. Double that if there is nothing you can do to help relieve that person’s pain. My mother-in-law Lorraine, Max and Cam's Nana, has inoperable lung cancer. And it sucks. She fought it off 3 years ago, going through an excruciatingly painful surgery to have half of her lung removed. Now the cancer has come back, and we have no idea how much time we have left with her.
We do our best to stay positive, maintain hope, tell jokes, give lots of hugs, and make sure to remember to always say “I love you”. It’s all so bittersweet because with each passing day we know that our time with her is finite.
We want to cram as much stuff in right now while she is still feeling up to it. Swimming and pictures and celebrations. Vacations and favourite meals and whatever her heart desires - we want to do it all.
I think the hardest part for us is managing the heaviness we feel in knowing we will eventually lose her. She's still here with us, so we need to make sure we make the most of every day, that we focus on the living. It is so hard to push down the lump in your throat when you wonder will this be the last time we celebrate this holiday with her? Will she be feeling well enough to participate in Christmas? Will she be here to give me gardening advice next spring? Will she see her son Chris get married?
Of course you want to believe she will be. But you know deep down there is a real possibility that she won't.
There is also guilt. Sure we all feel sad, we are grieving at even the thought of losing her. But she is the one who is experiencing both the physical and emotional pain of working through this process. Nobody wants to say it, the "d" word. So instead of acknowledging that she is coughing more and more, we say "oh, you have this cold too? It's terrible! I'm snoring like a bear at night - how about you?". You ignore the fact that she is losing weight, that it's harder for her to catch her breath, and that she is moving slower by each day. She is still here. She is still living. That's worth something. It has to be where we put our focus.
Lung cancer is a son of a bitch. She never even smoked.
Ah baking. I used to bake a lot (pre-kids). Unfortunately for them, baking has taken a back seat to things like making sure they don't clobber each other and tackling the ever growing mountain of laundry that needs to be done. But don't be fooled, I can bake with the best of them. This past weekend I made one of Lorraine's favourites - lemon loaf. Nothing fancy, straight from the pages of the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook. It was a big hit. I suspect I'll be baking more of these in the near future.
My mother-in-law Lorraine (aka Nana) knows a TONNE about gardening. You’d never guess it. I don’t say that because her garden doesn’t look wonderful (oy – double negative), because, it is a very lovely garden. I say that because she doesn’t talk about it all that much. Not until you start working in the garden with her. Then you realize, holy shit, this woman knows her stuff. This summer, as I hacked and slashed my garden down to nothing, she stood back and let me have at it. Once I was done, she let me know what the names of each of the remaining plants were, whether or not they would grow back next spring, or maybe take a year to recover from my plantslaughter. She showed me how to deadhead the lilac bushes. She hypothesized that the tiger lilies that I had trampled on would probably be just fine (and they are). She reminded me to water the transplanted hostas and new cedar bush and purple fountain grass every day. She also knows when each plant will flower, and what colour it will be. When I was tempted to fill in all of the empty spaces I had just created she gently reminded me that I should wait, because “in spring we’ll plant flowers”.
So I want to remind her of that, because I’ll need her help and her guidance. Stay strong Lorraine, and remember – in spring we’ll plant flowers.
My mother-in-law turns 59 next week.
