Tears


I didn't cry about it for the longest time. I mean, come on, I was nine -- how much do you know when you're nine?

I remember when I first cried, and where, exactly. We were sitting in a meeting room with mom, dad, and a bunch of doctors, since mom was going into Bone Marrow -- an intensive, 3 week process during which she would stay in the hospital and get near-lethal doses of chemo thrown at her in attempt to kill every cancer cell. In doing so, however, the chemo would also kill any fast-replicating cell, which included her immune system. It's the same reason your hair falls out. So whenever we wanted to see her, we needed to scrub under our fingernails and up to our elbows with hot water and soap, and put on booties around our shoes.

The hospital elevators were huge -- so you could fit a stretcher in them.

In that meeting room, I had my usual stash of stuff that I would bring to the hospital when I went with mom for her radiation -- an hour or two in the waiting room to myself, or sometimes with Rich, meant a new thing called popular music, with a new thing called a portable CD player, and D'Alurie's Book of Greek Myths, or one of the Chronicles of Narnia. Maybe even one of The Baby Sitters Club books...I never liked them much, but my friends loved them, so I tried to read about the Asian and the diabetic and the girl with the divorced parents and all that shit. Rich and I would play games with the CD player -- he would put in a CD and play it, and I would try to tell what it was by the swirling colors in the little glass screen. We were playing games. We were still children.

The doctors in clean, white lab coats were going over what exactly would happen, trying to break it down for Rich and me, even though Rich probably got it more, since he was 11. Then he said it -- "a one to three percent chance of dying" -- and my heart just doubled its speed, beating too fast. I panicked, I couldn't swallow or breathe, and I just started to cry, hysterically.

I hadn't cried when I found out, when they took my mom into a dark room to cut out her tumor, when I watched her give herself shots in the belly in the bathroom, when the white-coated doctors had smiled at me, my curiosity, my youth, when I asked if there were genetic tests yet to see if I would get it. The doctor said no, surprised at me, told me maybe in a few years. You can get that test, now, if the cancer is genetic, you know...I don't want it. Or maybe I do. I don't know.

I didn't cry when I saw her, all her hair fallen out, weak, dying for the first time through.

But when they told me she could die...I had never felt like that before. It didn't even make any sense, either. The only people who died in Bone Marrow were little kids with lukemia who didn't have an immune system to begin with, or old people who were too tired to fight anymore.

My mother was a fighter...

She told me, later on, that when she first got diagnosed, there was a period of time before she got results on whether or not it had spread into the rest of the body. During those few days was the Social Studies Fair, in which Rich and I both got first place. She told herself then that she didn't care about what the test said or how bad it was, that she would fight and live for us. Sometimes I wonder if she just...didn't have anything to fight for anymore, when she did die. But I know that's not true.

Before she went in, I bought two little red stones from the nature section of the bookstore. I gave one to her and kept one, and she promised to keep it by her side the whole time. During school when I would get lonely, I would take it out of my backpack and touch it, clench it in my fist, close my eyes and think. Pray. I was in 5th grade. None of the other kids knew how to act around me, except my friends, and Amy. I put it in her coffin.

I remember when she was gone a strange smell began to come from under my arms, and it confused me -- I didn't know what puberty was. I guess I began to grow up without her by my side right then and there.

I didn't have any reason to cry when they told me "one to three percent," but I did. And I didn't cry again until she...until she was done fighting. Until it was time to let go. She knew, she knew that's what God had planned for her, that it was time. I hope I'm able to have the same insight in my life...I hope...

I hope this year I can cry because I'm so happy.

I hope this year can be better than the last.

I hope I can remember.

I really do.



(c) Kate Finneran 2003



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