second blog

It is not early and I wish it were earlier. Every morning I feel late, as if the one hour of time I missed would have been the most productive one. This feeling usually dissolves at some point during the day and I’m able to tell myself that tomorrow will be different; I will wake up early, I will have that hour in which all things I have not done will get done. This is only my second blog. Every day I think about my mom and most days write blogs in my head about her but I haven’t written any of them down yet. And I don’t really know why. Writing about how I feel about my mom’s Carcinoid isn’t one of those things I ever plan to do in that one elusive hour. My feelings couldn’t fit in that hour, they hang over and around me like a damp cold day when it’s cold outside and inside – maybe like Russia in the late fall or Nova Scotia in the spring. So I try to keep this feeling away. I go home more, talk to my mom on the phone more. Getting lost for a while in the normalcy of every day activities can usually make me feel like Carcinoid is just the name of some strange great-aunt who always threatens to visit but never does – so we’ve heard stories about her but never actually seen her. But despite the fact that my mom continues to live her life in so many of the ways she always has (swimming, working, organizing, gardening, looking after everything), I can see that Carcinoid is there, in all these things and it makes me scared. So scared. But whether I look at it or not it doesn’t go away; I know why my mom is doing certain things, why she is taking a special care in things, why she can’t waste the hours in a day that I do. I also know why she feels bad on Tuedays and frequently throughout the week at any given time. So I don’t like to talk about and I don’t really like to think about it, because to be honest I don’t really know how. (Can someone please tell me what I will do without my mom?).

first words

What is there to say first of all else? There are so many things on top and underneath of each other and I am afraid to reach down and take just one of them up in case I suddenly have to look them all head on; eye to eye and face to face. No, I am not strong enough to really confront the thoughts I have about my 29 years and my mom’s 52. At least not anymore than a child who reaches out and dares to quickly run a finger through a candle flame - -they know that to keep their hand still would mean they’d be burned. So I don’t want to keep my hand in one place. I am not even fascinated with the flame. But I do want to brave for my mom. I want to not be so far away, because she goes to all these appointments all by herself and I just think it’s so lonely as it is to suddenly one day be left alone with a disease that won’t tell you where it’s taking you. I want to get in the car and drive with her. And I want so badly for her to know how beautiful she is. I want to talk more to my sister . . .
But it’s hard not to keep it all at a distance. Because it’s just so close. I remember last year when the seriousness of it was told to just the oldest of the kids and (I think it was a couple days later) that I put my head down on my desk and sobbed and sobbed. You know, I don’t know where things like this go inside of us. Because how can we carry something that seems so much heavier and bigger than we are? I don’t know how and I just pray that somehow I can reach down to that deepest place and know that I’m not going drown. Know that I can find my mom’s hand and hold it.
I will write other things next time. I feel like I’ve just turned on a washing machine inside myself. I am remembering and thinking about so many things: my dad crying at Christmas and saying how he didn’t even want to think about the possibility of there being a time when my mom wasn’t there, this Patti Griffin song that makes me so sad and cry and think of my mom, Patrick, my husband, saying that life is hard, how happy it makes me to read the things my mom is writing. Not everything can be said all at once. Wait for the feelings to find the words.
Naomi (2nd oldest, 1st daughter)