My Mother’s Passing

“When I was a freshman in college my mom got diagnosed with cancer, what they thought was ovarian cancer. So she had a full hysterectomy and went through surgery and stuff and was sick with chemo and got really thin and it was pretty awful. Then they said, ‘We got it! It’s all better!’ And we were like, ‘Great!’

So she was feeling really good and healthy for a couple months and then…well, for a little bit longer – maybe like four months or so. My sophomore year of college I transferred to a different school and a part of that was that I transferred down to where I knew some people. Also, I just thought I had wanted to leave home, but this seemed like a time I should come back. So I transferred.

That winter, that December my sophomore year of college, my mom was getting really sick again, so they went down to the Mayo Clinic. They realized that it had been a misdiagnosis. She did not have ovarian cancer, she had a really rare form of cancer called goblet cell, which actually started in her appendix (which, in hindsight, the doctors said, ‘I don’t know why this didn’t get caught earlier, because when you went in for your hysterectomy you didn’t have an appendix,’ and she’s never had it out before).

This kind of cancer is not like a mass, it’s more like a mucus. It just eats your organs. The hysterectomy delayed it, which was good, because it took out organs that this cancer would have dominated and made mush. So it gave her more time, but it didn’t…help. That whole spring of 2004, she was really sick and was going through radiation and stuff. Finally in April of that year they went down to the Mayo Clinic and the doctors stated, ‘Yeah, there’s nothing that we can do. We can have you keep going through radiation and things and give you a little bit more time, but really there’s nothing that we can do.’

I read her the book ‘The Red Tent,’ and I think I actually read it to her twice, because I really didn’t know how else to connect with her.

She decided to stop treatment. We had about two months where she went on a feeding tube and she just really slowly deteriorated. I was nineteen (I turned twenty when she was super sick). She was really, really sick. She went to my sister’s graduation in Green Bay and while they were gone, I shaved my head. She never lost her hair, but I was just having a bad day and I thought, ‘This will make me feel better.’ I was just going through some shit and not processing anything.

My mother and I were never close. At all. I was always fiercely independent and I don’t think we had…maybe one or two (and I can’t even remember any of them right now) in-depth or remotely emotional conversations. We were not close, and at that point in my life I was not a caregiver, really, in any way. So my sisters did a lot of the medical things for my mom because she was at home, but I just read to her.

I read her the book ‘The Red Tent,’ and I think I actually read it to her twice, because I really didn’t know how else to connect with her. All my other sisters had all these questions to ask, and one of my sisters videotaped and recorded her and asked her all these questions. And I thought, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m nineteen, I’m twenty; I don’t know what I need to know from this woman.

I was afraid she’d be, like, immediately cold and just completely gone, and I was so afraid.

But for some reason, my mom decided that when she passed – when she was sick somebody had given her this lotion she really liked the smell of (I don’t even remember what the fragrance was) – she decided that when she passed, she wanted my aunt and I to rub this lotion on her. I’m not totally sure why, or what it meant to her. But she said, ‘Shortly after I go, I want you to lotion on my hands and my arms, my legs and my feet.’ And I said, ‘Um…okay.’

The night that she died, we all knew it was the end, and all my sisters were there. We were all around the bed when it happened. I mean, I was terrified. Not of her dying, but of having to rub this lotion on her after she was gone. I was afraid she’d be immediately cold and just completely gone, and I was so afraid.

She passed, and I didn’t have anything to do with any of the medical things or anything. My other sisters took care of that, and a bunch of my aunts and uncles. My aunt said, ‘It’s time.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my god, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this in any way.’ It probably only had been maybe a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes, since she had gone. I kept thinking, ‘Oh, god, she’s going to be freezing. It’s going to be terrible.’

I remember going in and doing it – rubbing this lotion on her arms and on her legs, and her toes. The tips of her toes and her fingers were cold, but they were always cold even when she was alive, so that wasn’t weird. But it was so bizarre and surreal to feel her skin that was still…really warm actually, the most bizarre thing. I don’t know why that sticks with me so much, but it really does. She’s been gone ten years now. I still don’t totally understand it.

It might actually make a lot of sense that my mom knew that my aunt would want to do something and take an active role in being helpful or helping my mom pass in some way. And so that makes a ton of sense for my aunt, but…maybe my mom knew that I would need that too.”