A few days ago, and a month after my last entry my mother-in-law died. It has been a painful and distressing time. It turns out the cancer (non-small cell lung cancer) was in her spine, pelvic bone, the lymph nodes surrounding her heart and, possibly more I cannot remember. Almost immediately after the diagnosis her pain level sky-rocketed. She was returned to the hospital, never to return home. After almost three weeks there receiving radiation treatment to the areas most afflicted with pain, she was moved to a nursing home and hospice care. In a week she was gone.
Her husband was devastated. He was unable to face the reality of her approaching death. Though he sat by her every day, all day, in the hospital and nursing home, he was so filled with bitterness and anger no one wanted to go over to visit. He felt contempt for her caregivers, distrust of her doctors and was reduced to blubbering tears when my husband went to talk to him. Neither of this dying mother's children were allowed a peaceful visit to say goodbye.
My own stress level lowered, ironically, the one where I was remembering my own fear of cancer. Instead I stepped back and watched this sad play unfold. I was grateful that it was a short one. I know my mother-in-law suffered if her meds weren't strong enough. And when they were strong enough she was asleep. So mostly she was unaware of anything.
But the demand on my husband has been hard. He is uncomfortable in the role of advocate and so it takes work. He does not shirk from it but he pays a price.
Still it is life. Real, ordinary, unpleasant, predictable and sad. Hardly new or novel there have been countless parents who have ended up in the hospital with a disease that eventually carried them away. Rarely do elderly couples die together and frequently adult children must cope with an unhappy widowed parent. That is the road we are on. That too will change eventually.
As I say goodbye to a woman I didn't really know very well, I hope that I can also say goodbye to the temptation to conjure up evil ghosts who might pursue me in my dreams. Let the living and the here and now be my most important concern. The unhappy memories that this pulled out of my own past, whether of childhood, loss, or cancer, need not stay present for long. They are the past, they are done, and they are behind me. I will work at letting them go.
