One Little Elephant

What follows is a page from my personal journal, written a few years ago...

I am distracted - trying to get all my crying done before I go north. She doesn’t want crying. That’s what she says, anyway. But I think, secretly, it comforts her that I cry. I hear the softness in her voice when she says I’m just like my father - feel too much, too deeply. She asks me not to come before the surgery. She wants to be alone until that morning, wants a chance to be this version of herself a little longer before they slip a knife into her flesh and life changes.

I spend these last few days of “before” getting ready - buying her fancy pajamas, manicure and pedicure stuff, a hose and nozzle to do her hair over the sink until she can shower again. I brush up on recipes designed to keep her blood sugar level and her nutrition good so that her body can heal. And I gather the stuff I'll need to scour her house from top to bottom so that when she comes home from the hospital and the hordes of well wishers begin to arrive, both she and her home will look marvelous. And I cry.

The men don’t understand. To them it seems silly, petty even, to worry about clothes and nails and hair in the face of possible death. They don’t understand that it’s armor, weaponry - important in the healing process, important to winning.

Or to losing with dignity.

My sister and I talk strategy. Who will arrive when. Who will take responsibility for what. The telephone line buzzes with plans and echoes with things unsaid. We do not speak our pain and fear. Not now. That will come later. We are serious, unemotional.

I am the workhorse. I'll help ensure everything runs smoothly, silently cleaning and cooking and refilling glasses. My sister will stay close to my mother, chatting and comforting, dealing with doctors. My brothers will run errands, take care of business. When my mother is feeling strong and positive, she will want my sister. When she is feeling spiritual, she’ll want her sons. And when she is feeling weak and vulnerable, she will want me.

My sister will be the front woman. Like my mother, she's beautiful and a master at socializing. My sister’s job: greet and schmooze. Visitors will leave feeling appreciated, important, positive, and never realizing how skillfully she ensured they didn’t overstay and tire mother. At the end of each day my sister and I will sit together and write lively thank you notes for the food the visitors leave. Most of that food our men will take and donate somewhere. My mother’s friends don’t understand diabetes or the temptation and danger they bring into the house out of kindness and love. We do not try to explain. We accept their love and later quietly pass those gifts of love on to strangers.

The routine is familiar, honed over many years and many celebrations and crises. Big families, my mother likes to say, don’t require family reunions - weddings and funerals are frequent enough.

Just two weeks ago my mother danced at a wedding, her curly blond hair bouncing to the music. She’s a smart woman, a deep thinker, and yet she has an innocence and joyfulness about her that is almost childlike. People are drawn to her happiness like moths to a flame. How many gentlemen have come calling in the long years since my father’s death, drawn by the glow of that happiness? She is always kind when she tells them she’s still married to my father and always will be.

My mother's doctor says she has the heart and lungs of a woman twenty years younger . No one ever believes mother's true age. It only shows when she stops smiling and she rarely does. She works out at the gym five days a week. She says she feels wonderful. She looks wonderful.

Yet they will amputate her breast in a few days.

It’s cancer. She has refused all other treatment. Chemo she says is for the young, not for people her age. She has seen the results on too many friends. Life without life.

“We will do what we can,” my mother says. “But in the end…well, when I pray Thy will be done, I mean it.”

I cry when she says that because I have stood beside her at the edge of enough graves to know it’s true. I cry. And strangely my tears seem to comfort her, make her stronger. “You are so like your father,” she says softly.

Soon we go to battle. She is calm. I am terrified. But I will stop crying soon. I will do what must be done, able to do it because I know with my mother leading the charge, win or lose, we will not be defeated.

postscript February 2011

Lois Margaret Higdon Rice lived Faith, Hope and Love. She led the charge with laughter and courage and dignity to her last breath. And we were not defeated.