Nothing prepares you for the news that your mother is dying of cancer.
On May 5, my mother was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer called angiosarcoma. The doctors told us she has six to nine months left to live. She made the difficult decision to initiate hospice care.
Even as I write these words, my heart races. I am inside a dark and empty feeling. I have always turned to language to process my emotions and experiences. Words give solidity and sense to the chaos of life. Words take us into the depths of the human soul, into the essence and mystery of life. As I fall through the darkness, I cling to words. I will share them here as a way to both document and transcend this horrific reality.
Grief Fragments is the name I am giving to this ongoing diary about the experience of losing my mother to cancer. I want to hold these days, hold these feelings, pin them down. Even if I cannot understand what is happening, I can at least communicate the horror of it to others. I can express it, document it, put it into language. Writing might be the one act that keeps me alive.
My mother is all I have in this world. I've talked about her often on the podcast. She is my soulmate and the love of my life. She is one of the only people (other than my late father) who loves me and cares about me. I lost my father when I was 16; now, I will most likely lose my mother at 36. And I will be truly alone. I have no idea how I will survive this or how I will live without her.
In Mourning Diary, Roland Barthes wrote these words after the death of his mother:
Sometimes roused by desires (say, the trip to Tunisia), but they're desires of before—somehow anachronistic; they come from another shore, another country, the country of before.—Today it is a flat, dreary country—virtually without water—and paltry.
Loss always splits our lives into a before and after. Right now, I am in "the country of before." It is a country where my mother lives and breathes and texts me silly gifs and tells me how much she loves me. Someday soon, she will be gone—and the love will be gone. I will live in the country of after where only memories, photos, videos, and the words in my diaries will remain of the woman who created me. There is no me without her. Oh, what will I do? What will I do?
