“What would I ever do without you, Dad?” No truer words were ever spoken, and yet I would find out less than 24 hours later. My dad, whom I had considered the smartest person I’d ever met (and still feel that way), had just fixed something on our computer for me. I knew he was sick. Even though everyone tried in their own ways to shelter me as much as possible, at the age of 13 I found that cancer, chemo, and radiation were the on everyone’s minds as much as the New Kids on the Block had been on mine. But I still went to bed that night.. my last “normal” night for so many years to come. I rested easily under a blanket of naiveté knowing that everything would be alright.
Until it wasn’t…..
The next day mom and dad went to Columbus for his treatment. It was supposed to be a “simple” radiation therapy. They hadn’t started chemotherapy yet. I thought it was strange when my much older siblings all showed up at the house and said we were heading to Columbus too. In the car I heard hushed conversations about, “Mom insisted she needed to be there.” Still, I thought it must be a mistake… it shouldn’t take them long at the hospital. Either we would meet them in passing on the way or they would get home just as we got to the hospital. Regardless, we better get this straightened up soon… my mom was not a person to mess with and she gets stressed out when things don’t go right.
At the hospital, I heard more “adult talk” about how my dad had collapsed in the elevator from the parking garage. We waited outside of a room that the nurses said my father was in, but the voice I heard in there asking for a kleenex… that wasn’t my dad. The man I knew had a strong voice, authoritative but kind all at once. This voice was garbled, throaty… and all of that coughing! Couldn’t someone please help this man AND tell us the correct room my dad was in? We were wasting time. Why couldn’t my mom find the room… they had been there for at least a couple of hours hadn’t they?
My brother and sister-in-law said we should walk to the vending machine. Food??? Who could even behungry right now? Ok, actually a snack sounded kind of good to be honest. I can’t remember if we even made it to the machines. I know we got to a different floor and were walking down one long hallway after another, but then this…. SOUND…. So loud, so urgent sounding! Kind of like when you were watching TV late on Saturday night and all at once the color panels come onto the screen. Then… we run – back to the elevator. What about my Pepsi? The elevator door opens and my oldest brother is there. He’s in tears. Woah, this is the strangest day of my life. I just don’t get it. Then all of the words made sense and it hit me. GONE.
Suddenly, my mind put together all of the pieces of the puzzle from everything that had been going on within the previous months. Yet at the same time those pieces were lying on the floor in front of me. Hindsight tells me that I would spend so many years working those pieces back together, only to find out that the picture was NOTHING like the box advertised.
Just Call Me THAT Mom 