The Long Journey to Mother: A Daughter’s Diary

By Annie Downey

February 6, 2004

I have a deal with Mary. This is my deal: If I wear my wedding dress for ten days my mother will have a miracle. I wrote this down in the miracle book at the Mary Queen of the Universe Shrine in Orlando. On the fly. After having failed to pick up a blond wig at Dolly’s Stampede for my mother’s pending chemo.

My aunt wakes me. Her voice is akin to my mother’s. Yet it is not my mother’s. My mother having already left in the dark to the hospital with her new husband of a year. It is early, early — light just touching the edges of window. It is my birthday. I am thirty-four. Sleet, rain, and snow. The sky damp gray. An omen to the beginning of beginnings.

I have no battle cry.

On the table is an inherited piece of jewelry. A shiny gold bracelet that I would slide up and down my arm throughout my innocence and place carefully back in my mother’s jewelry box.

Mother. I breathe her name. Inhale. Hold.

There is a note. A note telling me to hang on. To hang on to two more years. I fold it and tuck it into my purse like a lullaby savior. If only. If only I could hope and believe for her. In those two years. Yet.

As I clamp bracelet to wrist my mother is being prepared and wiped down for palliative brain surgery — to relieve pressure of spinal fluid and disperse low levels of chemo to stop the rapid progress of a particularly invasive breast cancer now throughout her brain. Terminal. No cure. No nothing. Just a ‘maybe’ year. A “normal” three-to-five month diagnosis. Days, weeks, months. I calculate. It is like opening a box and only finding styro-foam peanuts. Dig, dig, search, search. There has to be something I am missing.

My aunt and I head down my grandparents’ drive — past woods and onto the main road. A soft blanket of snow covering — wind blowing it in snake-like pattern. I have my mother’s knitted shawl around my shoulders and her bracelet on my wrist. It is funny how we start to believe in anything in despair. Everything holds secret meaning. Prayer inevitable. So I do this. I pray. It relieves little.

At the hospital we forget our secret privacy code that lets us in. Get into the little waiting room. With a little screen that will tell us when surgery begins. We are powerless to do anything about it. We stand there. We are at a standstill. What I notice is the beige of the walls and the height of cubicle — its rounded contours. Then I say out of this place in me that is not me or even remotely attached to me — it is ‘other’ — “But I am her daughter.”

And then I am aware of something that is so overwhelmingly me — and it is an image — an image of my mother’s legs moving fast over grass to swoop and pick me up — running to the car and dragging me behind her — moving behind a lawn mower — bending in the garden — spreading against the car seat — in tennis skirts — in shorts — running for the softball — behind a shopping cart — walking ahead of me on the beach — her legs — moving — moving — beyond — ahead — faster. I caress this image. I rewind it over and over.

“Let me see…” the secretary says — but before she ‘sees,’ my mother’s oncologist comes out — though not part of the brain surgery, she is there — and she is holding out her hand and she is shaking mine up and down and saying fiercely —

“Your mother is a example to us all. An exceptional patient! What strength. She is so calm and poised — it is just amazing!” She beams and pushes her hands in lab coat pockets. What I hate about it is that it is ‘up’. Not normal at all. Like a goddamn aerobics class.

My mother’s new husband hands me my mother’s living will.

“You’re on it,” he says. I fold into a tiny little triangle and I stick it in my purse. My mother’s new husband points to the couple who witnessed it for me. They smile a little, not enough, like a flicker. I nod. What do they know? I think. Suddenly I want to scream at these strangers and tell them to not even try to smile. Why bother. Why try. If that is all it is. A pleasantry. I hate pleasantries. They are false and weak. My mother doesn’t deserve pleasantries. She deserves someone sobbing and pulling out hair.

Why don’t I sob and pull my hair? Why can’t I just break down and scream and kick my legs? Why can’t I feel?

Waiting for your mother to die is like waiting for the moon to forever disappear. How does one wait for that?

After surgery I wrap her shawl around her legs. Rearrange her hair over the egg shaped bump and stitches. Place the white hat I bought her for Christmas gently over.

“Some birthday? Huh?” she questions sadly.

I hand her a white rose — the card reads:

It’s a girl! Weighing 140 pounds, highly intelligent with attitude!

She laughs. Her normal laugh. Strong, clear, and familiar.

“Thank god I am in no position to breast feed you!” she says. Her hat tilted. Looking very dignified. She touches my bracelet. That’s all. It’s enough. I let go. I breathe. Once more.

March 6, 2004

My mother in pain. Tremendous pain. I am here stuck in my house. Snow is melting and she is approaching her third month. She tells me: “This is no way to live.”

Her legs are numb. She wets herself. Throws up. My brother tells me over the phone. Everyone is out of breath and impatient when they talk to me except my mother. “Don’t panic,” she says.

I panic anyway. I tell my brother tomorrow I will drive down. Tomorrow. It seems like forever away. God if you are out there. God if you are right here. I think. I go no further. When do miracles run out?

Everything seems stupid and shallow to me. It feels like night has been ripped from my heart. Deep night. Depth of soul. Sometimes Judas is needed. He who sees the darklings. Touches and soothes. It cannot be heaven on earth, this thing that swallows my mother’s spirit. It is manmade and false. This. What is it? It is certainly not death. Real dying. This. Or is it?

My mother says: “It’s the new chemo. I have lost my center because of it. My spiritual center.” Her voice is that of a thousand light years afar. Hollow. As her daughter I keenly sense exactly how this feels. It is like an endless falling. I grip the phone.

When I was five I sat on her bed wearing a red t-shirt. She was topless by the mirror. She always hung down her breasts to clasp on her bra. She did this. Her breasts swinging and then scooped up by whiteness. Then she put on a red t-shirt.

“Look mommy, I have a red t-shirt on, just like you.” She turned and tossed her hair. Put on her tennis socks. She didn’t look up.

“Yes, I see,” she said.

But she didn’t see.

Our relationship has always been so. Me seeing her. Her not seeing me. I’ve gotten good at it. I see exactly where she is right now. If only I could grasp it and pull it into me. Make her stay. Right here.

God.

God has little to say to me these days. Nothing really. He or she is leaving me in large volumes of space to figure myself out. To imagine the worst. To hope for the best. To be left behind. Alone. Without her. Mother.

Who am I now? Now that my mother is drifting out of sight. Into otherness? There is a part of me that wishes to join her. To reach out my hand and let her — draw me close — see me — finally.

Anew.

Annie Downey is a mother, daughter, wife, and writer who has published nationally in Utne Reader, Harper’s, and Hip Mama. She is currently working on a collection of essays in North Ferrisburgh.