Going home

Today was one of those days you know you'll always remember, not for being a joyful occasion, but because the sadness of it just pierces your heart so hard, you feel as though the pain of it will never go away.

Back in February, my mother was diagnosed with a fairly rare and incurable form of cancer called Primary Peritoneal Carcinoma, which stemmed from undetected ovarian cancer. The reason the ovarian cancer was undetected, was because my mother is the type of woman who felt that going to see a doctor was unnecessary unless you actually lost a limb and couldn't sew it back on yourself.

For the last seven months, my parents have understandably held onto the hope that chemotherapy and good medical care would eventually cure her, and refused to hear the doctors' diagnoses that she would not live past a year. Although I admired their faith that this illness would be conquered, I knew in my heart that they would be disappointed in the end.

I drove to Boston this morning, hoping that the bad feeling that had been nagging me the last few days would not be realized today...that the doctors wanting to meet with the family might just be nothing more than a means to get us all up to speed and on the same page at the same time.

And now, I find myself too emotional to write about the content of that meeting, although I was prepared a few moments ago to get it all out and down on the page, my own small bit of personal therapy, and yet I find that the words are caught in my throat. Maybe in a few days they'll loosen up.

What I will say is that after the initial shock to my parents at the doctor's words, and the expected upset at the words that nothing else could be done but to make sure she was as comfortable as possible, my mother went back to her room and turned to God.

My aunt and I sat with her, holding her hands, as the news began to sink in. And to my surprise (although I really shouldn't have been, after witnessing her religious devotion for the last four decades) she began to calm herself and really think about the next life. She said she would finally see the Blessed Mother, and maybe see her parents again, and her cousin, who died young a few years ago from leukemia.

Her fear began to turn into a sort of...I don't even know what word to use here. Not acceptance, or excitement, so much as the realization that everything she did her whole life, everything she lived for, every Mass, every prayer, every day of mental anguish and suffering, had carried her toward this final goal...of Heaven and God and peace.

I talked to my father briefly on the phone this evening, and cried with him, and listened to him grieve for what he was about to lose. Before he hung up, he asked me, "Guess what your mother said before I left the hospital this evening?

She said, "God is calling me home.'"