On November 5th 2012 a grade IV glioblastoma multiforme tumor was removed from my 56 year-old mother's right medial temporal lobe. She passed away January 29th 2014. My hope is that these pages help me work out the myriad ways in which our lives so drastically changed, and maybe also help other caregivers.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
warped
We've finally moved from treatment to hospice. It's had a much greater emotional impact on me than I thought it might. Life has pummeled us this last year, yet only now does it feel real. Incredibly real, perhaps because of the unique experience of watching your mother die. In fact it sort of crashes through the walls, the real coming out the other side, almost surreal; a mobius strip or the impossible triangle...so simple and so complex.
What has been hurting the most lately is that I can't remember what she was like. She's still alive, and I can't even remember. She's changed so drastically, and I've such a bad memory. I try to imagine how she used to talk and behave. I can't. I don't think I even have any videos. I'm not sure if it matters. My rational mind is freaking out, wondering why I can't get a grip. "Death is," it says. It happens to everyone, it happens all the time, it happens violently and quietly, it has happened for billions of years, and might continue for billions, so why, my rational mind wonders, have we not evolved to grasp that fact, to hold onto it, to understand the ubiquity of death? Such is life that it ends...it's so simple, so why does it feel so shocking?
Image: M.C. Escher's "Convex and Concave," 1955.
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