cancer

A Tired Refrain

by frogpondsrock on April 27, 2012

in Amy,cancer,Grief,Veronica

But it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

Months ago I was listening to Pamela Stephenson in conversation with Richard Fidler, or someone similar. Stephenson was talking about her latest book Sex Life: How Our Sexual Experiences Define Who We Are  By asking the audience how many times a day they thought about sex, and confiding that she thought about sex at least ten times before she even got out of bed, Stephenson encouraged her audience to really concentrate of those fleeting sexual thoughts and to be honest with their response to her question. Not surprisingly we think about sex an awful lot through out the course of the day.

Of course by then, I was thinking about sex as well, as that was where the conversation had led me. As I was trying to work out just how many times a day I thought about throwing “The Spouse” to the ground and having my evil way with him, my internal dialogue drifted down a different path and I started to think about how many times a day I thought about my Mother.

Thoughts of my mother and the constant ache that is her loss, play in the back of my psyche like a quiet soundtrack of grief, with occasional loud cymbal clashes of hurt,  punctuating the song with sharp flashes of pain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

My daughter rang me last night to talk about Amy. Veronica told me that she had written a post sharing her frustrations at just how difficult Amy is to parent at the moment. Mum is the person Veronica needs to talk to about Amy, not me. Veronica needs the practical advice that only her grandmother can give her, as Mum successfully parented a stubbornly defiant, girl child of her own.

This excerpt from Veronica’s latest blog post describes the challenges she is facing now with her wonderfully feisty daughter.

TIME OUT is my other weapon in my ever decreasing arsenal, as she shouts at me that she WILL NOT GO and YOU CAN’T MAKE ME and YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

It’s frustrating and admirable how defiant she is in the face of two parents staring her down. Even as I march her to time out, with, if I’m being honest, the help of her ear because there was no other option short of bodily lifting her, I am proud of her spirit and of her anger, and her ability to decide what she wants and aim for it no matter what.

I can not give my daughter what she needs. I am next to useless to her in situations like these because all I can do is glory in the fact that my grand daughter so like me. As I make sympathetic sounds and offer useless advice, inside I am secretly thrilled to bits with this evidence of my grand daughters spirit. Veronica knows this and it breaks my heart a little bit more.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

We are not allowed to grieve in Australia. We are certainly not allowed to grieve for the inappropriately long time that I have been grieving for my mother. It is coming up to three years, surely you must be over it by now, this grief of yours Kim is a tired refrain.

It might well be a tired refrain, but it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

The writing of this post was triggered by reading  this article, The Love of my Life by Cheryl Strayed

I am okay at the same time as I am not okay. I am supported by my close friends, as well as good online friends, but that support doesn’t stop me from wanting my Mother and being broken by the fact that my Mother is dead. Again and again and again.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

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How do you measure success?

by frogpondsrock on June 15, 2010

in blogging,cancer,David,Grief,Veronica

Last week Brenda asked on her blog, Mummytime, “where do you hope your blog will take you?”

This morning I followed  a twitter link to a blog post that asked why do most artists blogs fail?

I commented with Interesting point but it all depends on how you measure success. I am an artist and I have a successful blog as well.

So this morning the ideas have meshed and I need to ask the question,

“How do you measure success?”

This time last year I measured my success by my ability to keep those I loved, alive and safe from harm.

I failed to keep my mother alive. The cancer that consumed her was  too strong and the strength of my love was not enough to save her.

My love was strong enough to let her go peacefully though and Veronica writes about it beautifully here.

I failed to protect my daughter from my brother and in his pain he lashed out bitterly at my girl and wounded her deeply.

I am an only child.

I am an orphan.

I am motherless.

I am successful.

We have survived the first year and my son is alive.

I kept my son alive in those dark months following the death of his Grandmother. It was touch and go there for a while and I watched him like a hawk.

I didn’t restrain him when he punched the walls.

I screamed back at him when he screamed his anguish at me. I held him as he cried like a baby and my tears mingled with his, I fed him pizza and let him sleep and protected him as best I could.

How do you tell a 15 year old that grief will pass when you are so immersed in the same grief and the tunnel is too long for even the tiniest glimmer of light?

I managed to get through this last year because of my blog. I could write out my grief here. When there was a deathly silence after the funeral and only my closest friend rang me, I came to my blog for solace. When my head was going to explode with all the words I needed to say I came to my blog.

And you listened. You sent me chocolate and clippies, classical music and cards. You commissioned my art work and made me think of renewal. You posted photos on your blogs for me and You held me close and let me cry. You filled my inbox with  emails and when there werent any words You hugged me and now we are here together.

My blog is successful and that is down to You.

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The first sentence is the hardest…

by frogpondsrock on November 10, 2009

in cancer,Sadness,Veronica

The first sentence of the opening paragraph sets the tone for the whole piece of writing that follows. This is even more true for a blog post where lots of people don’t actually read the whole post. The opening and closing sentences give the skimmers a point of reference to frame their questions or comments.

Sometimes I will sit here and the words just spill out onto the page faster than I can type them. The piece of writing takes on a small life of its own and all the words fit together nicely.

Other times I will be interrupted and lose my train of thought so many times that, I either just give up and save the piece to my drafts folder or I struggle along clumsily, placing all the wrong words in a crooked line.

Often I will read something my daughter has written and the powerful beauty of her words will take my breath away. I will start to cry as I nod yes to her words, and then with her pain ringing in my ears I end up here trying to articulate my own.

Veronica will be 21 on Thursday. Veronica’s 21st birthday was the milestone that Mum was aiming for. I am struggling to contain my bitterness that we lost Mum to a cancer she should never have had. I am so sad for Veronica that her birthday will be such a difficult day without Mum.

Normally we would have planned a celebration. There would have been lots of food and music, laughter and joy. Now there is only sadness and ashes.I am bitter that the joy has been stolen from my child.

Veronica and I are going out for lunch to our favourite Japanese restaurant tomorrow, just us two together.

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day (11 November) marks the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year Australians observe one minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.

I wonder what we will be remembering?

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I have stopped cooking.

by frogpondsrock on September 24, 2009

in cancer,Family,Grief,Hope

I can’t remember the last time I cooked two proper evening meals in a row. By proper I mean healthy and balanced.

In the last few months of Mum’s illness I was stretched really, really thinly as Mum had become less able to do all the stuff healthy people take for granted. Simple things like changing the sheets on her bed had become akin to climbing Everest.

Everything fell by the wayside, as the physical demands of caring for my Mum didn’t leave any time left over for secondary shit like my own housework or cooking. I am an indifferent housekeeper at the best of times and indifferent quickly turned to non-existent.

After Mum died everything became a major effort and for a couple of weeks I suffered a massive case of the couldn’t be bothereds.Cooking? Bleh. Housework? Who gives a fuck, shut the door. I just could not be bothered doing much of anything.

And then it started to rain and it rained and rained and rained. The dreadful grey wetness of winter nearly did my head in. Please remind me of that, when I have to buy water this summer and I am stressing out about bushfire.

Last week The Spouse was splitting wood and he developed a painful tightness in his chest. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t a heart attack as there wasn’t any of the hormone blah blah blah in his blood which indicates damage to the heart muscle,phew.

The Spouse is off to the cardiologists tomorrow for a stress test which will give us a clearer picture of what exactly is going on. His cholesterol levels were high at 7.8, which is enough to statistically give him the chances of  1 in 50 of suffering a fatal heart attack.

So now my control freak tendencies can really be let loose up on my family. The Spouse needs to lower his cholesterol and all the food choices he makes from now on will be supervised by yours truly.It is well past time that I dusted off the pots and pans and started cooking again. As soon as I hit publish I am going to make a large pot of  fish soup for tea.

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“My Nanny is very sick.”

by frogpondsrock on June 16, 2009

in cancer,Family,Sadness

Out of the mouths of babes.. *sigh* Amy looked at my Mum in her hospital bed and then very solemnly told me, “My Nanny is very sick”.

I had to agree with her, “Yes Darling, Nanny is very sick.”

I don’t know what is harder, writing about Mum and her cancer knowing that she reads my blog. Or writing about Mum with the thought in the back of my mind that she mightn’t actually get to read this post.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Ratbrainshitfuck.

We had been going really well. The pain meds were working and the steroids Mum was taking to help her breathe, had given her a healthy appetite and a nice little boost of energy.

The fact that the cancer had spread into a couple of spots in the back of her skull and jaw as well as into her spine was secondary really. We were just going to give those pesky bone mets a quick zap or two of radiation and then it was back to normal. Well as normal as possible.

When you are living with a terminal illness you don’t stop making plans and looking towards the future. You grab each pain free moment and embrace it.

Mum and I weren’t quick enough grabbing our moment and we wasted three pain free weeks waiting for doctors and eventually having radiation.

The first lot of five zaps to Mum’s skull and jaw were completed and the only side effects were loss of appetite and some residual tiredness. Most importantly Mum still had all her hair. The ‘wig in waiting’ was still waiting.

Last week a CT scan ordered by Mum’s  Doctor, showed that the bone mets in Mum’s spine had fractured a vertebrae and so we started another round of radiation on Wednesday the 10th of June.

By Friday, Mum was quite annoyed that her hair had started to fall out and she was frustrated that she was tiring so easily.

Saturday the 13th of June I needed to have Mum admitted to hospital. The decline in Mum was rapid and frightening.  Mum had suddenly become very frail overnight and she was a bit confused as well. Mum couldn’t walk without hanging onto my arm and she just didn’t have the strength to dress herself. Her pain levels were quite high and I was very worried.

Once I had admitted Mum to hospital I felt equal amounts of relief and fear. I was relieved that Mum was safe and being cared for. And I was frightened at just how rapidly Mum had gone downhill. I was frightened that now Veronica and I, who had been with Mum every step of this horrible journey would be left out of the loop. Things were suddenly spiralling out of control, out of MY control and I was afraid.

Afraid that the staff at the palliative care unit wouldn’t care for Mum properly. Afraid that they would treat Mum’s frailty as normal. Afraid that this isn’t just a glitch, that maybe this is the beginning of the end.

Afraid. Afraid. Afraid. I am Afraid.

The phone rang here at ten past seven this morning and I nearly jumped out of my fucking skin. When the caller said they were from Calvary’s Cardiac Centre, I nearly had a fucking cardiac myself. The receptionist was only calling to cancel Davids appointment for his echocardiogram today and blah de blah, blah blah. Phew.

Instead of sending David to school today I will take him in to visit Mum. It will be a shock for Dave but at the moment I am not prepared to waste any time at all.

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