New Year's Day

New Year’s Day

I thought I was strong enough.

We all think we’re strong enough, after the first breakup, the first job rejection, the first marriage, the first divorce.

It hurts a lot more when you find out you’re not strong enough for cancer.

And I was still calling my own mother “Mommy”, had just shed the habit- an art, as I regarded it- of thumbsucking and finally trashed my crayons in favor of a more sophisticated tool, the pencil. Or a pen.

“It’s cold, Mommy,” I was just saying. “I’m so cold, Mommy.”

Everywhere hurt. It hurt a lot. My head, my mouth, my bones. And I always needed to go potty, but nothing much but all the water I’d been drinking and a few other select items. The experience was not relieving.

“I know,” Mommy would always say, holding my hand and flushing the toilet for me when I couldn’t do it, always so tired. “I know, honey. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

I thought about this a lot, what she said, because she always told me that. And I concluded that she was lying on both counts, the first one because she didn’t know since she never had cancer, and two because it wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay.

But I didn’t think it mattered. She was still there for me.

“It’ll be over so quickly you won’t believe it,” she told me right before my first blood test and a bone marrow sample.

She was right, then. I couldn’t believe it, but not in the way you think.

Needles suck.

“Those doctors are very smart,” she told me as I climbed into the cool but scary-looking CAT-scan machine. “And no, darling, there won’t be any kittens inside. It’s just an acronym.”

A what?

“An acronym, dear.”

“You’ll be fine,” she told me, again, before they whisked me away for the first surgery to try and remove the cancer. “You won’t feel a thing.”

All those words came in cycles. And then they narrowed down, eliminating the excess words, pruning grammar like an expert gardener/editor, until she could say those perfect magic words that would somehow lift me out of this big, big hole that I’d fallen into by mistake, a hole that was dug by maybe someone else who had forgotten to fill it again. She never got them just right, but there was this one time where she’d come pretty close. I’m proud of my mommy. Very proud.

“Alex, you know I love you, right?” She’d said once upon a time, brushing the hair that was no longer there from my forehead. “You know I would never want you to be hurt, right?”

I looked at her with my big blue eyes. Oh, how childish I had once been. And look at me now, no better, even more vulnerable. “Mommy, I’m okay. You said I was.”

The tears I thought I saw suddenly glazed over her eyes like a really good donut. She wiped those tears with the back of her hand messily, smearing her makeup. My mommy is a beautiful mommy. I don’t know why she put all that stuff on her face.

“Oh, Alex.” She managed a very wobbly smile, and stroked my cheek blindly. “Alex, I love you so much. I love you more than anything in the world.” The tears were freefalling from her eyes now; they were falling so fast and there were a lot of them too.

I blinked. My eyes were really, really dry. “Mommy, don’t cry. Please?”

She sucked in a big, shuddering gulp of air. A really big sip of oxygen that breathed life into her lungs and seemed to siphon the life out of mine. I envied her, but I also pitied her. “Alex, I’ve been trying so hard. I want to fight this with you. You know I want you to live!”

She sounded like she wanted to punch the air for emphasis. I smiled weakly. My mommy could be so silly sometimes…

“I want you to fight this, love!” she whispered fiercely.

I nodded, my heavy bald head weighing me down. I promised her I’d fight hard. Really hard.

1 ½ months later

My mother was a tired woman.

She had almost given up several times. Especially after the cancer kept coming back. It never gave up. But neither did we.

“Keep fighting. You know what to do.” She said this every time I went for chemo, for radiation, for more surgery.

I don’t know if she knew this was killing me. I think she knew. But she didn’t want me to go so soon, either. I was still so young…

3 weeks later, December 15th

My mother was an exhausted woman.

This was becoming a real war. I’d won some battles, but I had also lost some. Mommy said this was okay, perfectly fine. You had to “win some, lose some.”

It was snowing now. And the weeks passed, and soon it was almost Christmas day.

“Mommy?” I murmured quietly, rasping. She looked at me with hollow eyes, a tired aged face.

“Yes?”

“It hurts. Sometimes I don’t think I can fight this. It just keeps winning.”

She stared at me, almost angrily. “You have to fight hard, Alex! Keep fighting!”

It sounded so desperate. This was a plea, reminded terms of a promise.

“Okay, Momma. I’ll keep fighting…”

Christmas Eve

My mother was a happy woman, because it was almost Christmas.

“You’re old and smart enough to know Santa isn’t real,” she declared as she hauled out so many boxes. I don’t know where she’d gotten them. “But you’ve been battling so long and hard. I’m very proud of you, honey. You don’t know how proud I am of you.”

That might’ve been a lie, but I let her off because it was almost Christmas.

“Now open your presents!” she squealed, clapping her hands excitedly. “And tell me if you like them.”

She sat there, anticipating my reaction like a little child. I smiled, pasted it on there as I stripped off the wrapping paper. “Wow, Mommy. Thanks. I love it!”

I had to let her know I was still fighting, still battling as hard as I could. “Thank you, Mommy.” I said it again, as loud as I could, nearly screaming it and for that moment she understood and my mommy looked so, so proud of me, her little soldier…

It was a dream. And in my dream, I was finally free.

I could fly.

I could swim.

I could climb up to the very top of the tallest mountains.

Because I was really, seriously FREE.

My face itched. My nose itched. My eyes were dry. I opened them.

“You can’t tell him to keep fighting, Marie.”

Marie was my mommy’s real name. And that was Grandma’s voice, wasn’t it?

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot say!” she hissed back. My mommy looked very tired. Exhausted. Extremely worn out.

“Marie, you shouldn’t be doing this to him. Look at your baby. Look at him!”

I quickly squeezed my eyes shut. They swiveled their heads over to look at me, their stares burning into my face.

“Leukemia does that to some people, Mother,” my mommy said sarcastically. “You, of all people, should know.”

They had turned their backs on me again, but it wasn’t like that would tune out the loud whispering they were still doing.

“I know. You don’t have to remind me of that. But you’re making him live. Have you ever given him the choice to just let go? Look at your little boy,” she said again.

“I don’t have to see that he’s dying. But he knows there’s a choice for him. That he can just stop fighting. It’s an option, you know.”

“Then why don’t you tell that to him?”

Grandma’s voice was very soft. Mommy’s grew louder.

“He’s my world, Maw. How could I…?”

“Because you love him,” she replied simply.

It was the night before New Year’s day. A new year. For me, or for Mommy?

She crept up to the side of my hospital bed. Everything was getting worse. I don’t think I could fight for much longer.

But I still kept fighting.

“Alex?” she whispered.

“Yes, Mommy?”

“You heard your Grandma and I this afternoon?”

“…”

The monitors don’t lie.

“It’s okay, Alex.”

“Okay.”

There was a long, long period of silence. I still had my eyes closed. I heard her take a deep breath, a very deep breath.

“It’s okay for you to stop fighting. I’ll understand.”

Now I was battling my mind, not just my body. “I can’t let you down.” My mother would be all alone if I just…quit.

“I’ll understand, honey. Your mommy is a very strong person. I think I”ll manage. But it will be harder for me,” she added sadly.

For a second, I was mad that Daddy never stayed, Daddy never helped.

She repeated it. “You can stop fighting now, Alex. You might be happier that way.”

3 hours later

Everything was quiet.

It wasn’t supposed to be quiet. I thought people would stay up for New Year’s.

“Mommy?”

My voice rang out in the silence. She was sleeping.

I decided to ask anyway. Maybe she would wake up.

“What’s being happy like? Is it like…like heaven?”

I waited. I really waited patiently for a very long time. This was nice of me because all the time it was getting harder to breath. I had no real idea of heaven anyways, but it must be something really nice.

“I guess it is, Mommy.”

Even though I just answered my own question, I smiled sleepily. Just a few more moments now. To hang on a little longer…

“I fought as long as I could, Mommy,” I whispered to her, reaching out to her in my dreams. “I hope you’re very, very proud of me.”

It was time to let go, and let her start a new year.

On her own.

Six years later

My mother is the strongest person I know.

I never really left her, you know. It would be silly of me to just disappear.

But Heaven’s nice. It’s nicer than I ever imagined.

God’s a cool person.

I’m still looking down at my mommy. I think she’s getting by just fine. It’s been a while since I finally let go, but it’s been forever since I’ve been happy. Happier that I could ever imagine, too.

Look at her.

See the woman in a white dress?

The handsome man beside her?

The little boy with the blonde hair, those big blue eyes that used to be mine?

Yes.

Right.

It’s a new year’s day.