A year ago today, my mother was admitted to the hospital. She ended up staying for a week. During that week, she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer called angiosarcoma. It manifested as a tumor that erupted from an area on her right leg. The doctors estimated that she had between six and nine months left to live, but she was dead within a month.
After she was discharged from the hospital, she transitioned to hospice. She spent her final weeks at home where I cared for her. I was by her side as she took her last breath on June 14th. Since then, nothing has felt right. I am still plummeting through darkness. It is a bottomless void.
I will never forget that week at the hospital. The rupture of it. The diagnosis that dazed me. I slept in a recliner by her hospital bed every single night. It was one of the loneliest and most terrifying experiences of my life. I have never been the same.
I watched her die. I watched her face her own death. I watched her slip away, into a haze of morphine.
When she died, I changed form. I shape-shifted. I don't know what I am now. Not a woman but a wound. A thing that bleeds and cries. I will never forget the wound on her leg. I had to change the bandage on it every day. I still smell my mother's blood. I still hear her voice. I still see the terror in her eyes.
I could not save my mother, just like I could not save my father. I don't know how I am going to save myself.
"23 Peaks" by Tori Amos
and I’m asking to heal
could you take this Burden from me?