Taking Care of My Mother Through Cancer

After a few minutes, she suddenly sat up and said softly, “I feel like throwing up.”

Last night, I saw my mother vomit in the kitchen sink.

Last night, I saw my mother vomit in the kitchen sink.

She had been feeling nauseous throughout the day, and messaged me a few times to tell me that her stomach hurt and that she had no appetite, and then asked me to come home after work to cook for her. I did, and later, I whipped up some sautéed spinach and creamed chicken with potatoes and carrots, food that she really liked and which was pretty healthy.

All the Web sites said that spinach is a "Super Green," and that people like my mom should eat a lot of it things like that.

She ate half a plateful, and only a few spoonfuls of the spinach. I remember being so annoyed; I traveled three hours and cooked for almost two more just to have all this food wasted? She won’t even eat it properly? I was a little pissed. She kept asking me, “Have I eaten enough? Can I go take my medicine now?” Like a little kid. Like a helpless 5-year old child. I said yes, and she swallowed all the pills she needed that night, chasing it with a couple of glasses of water.

She smiled at me, and said, “Thank you for the meal. It was delicious. I’m going to sleep now.”

I nodded and lowered the volume of the tv. Then I proceeded to scrape the leftovers off of our plates and threw the rest into the garbage. Such a fucking waste, I thought, since we were yet to buy a refrigerator for her apartment. After cleaning up, I sat on the couch and started to read a novel I brought with me. I was tired from work and the long commute, from the cooking and cleaning, and I needed to rest.

After a few minutes, she suddenly sat up and said softly, “I feel like throwing up.”

Before I could answer, she ran a few steps towards the kitchen sink (she couldn’t make it to the bathroom), and vomited everything she ate that night. I stared at the sickening yellow shower of food being expelled from her body, of her violent retching, her eyes starting to fill with tears as she continued to throw up

I couldn’t move.

I sat rooted, staring at her open mouth, going gray around the edges. Her wide eyes dilated as her stomach purged its contents up her throat. Her knuckles growing white as she clutched the edges of the sink. I couldn’t go towards my own mother to comfort her as she threw up, when I had done countless of times for friends who had too much to drink and needed their hair held up as they retched, hunched, on a dimly lit sidewalk.

“I’ll clean that up,” I said when she finally finished.

“Thank you. I’m sorry for the mess,” she apologized, as she went to the bathroom and washed her face.

I looked at the sink with her undigested food and yellow bile, speckled with white and brown dots, the pills she has to drink everyday for six months. I hated myself at that moment because I was so fucking weak, a scared child who could only stare at her mother as she suffered.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last January. I know because I marked it in my diary, writing “Challenge Accepted” right next to it in big bold letters. Thing is, I am usually very bad at dates, and I have a lot of journals and notebooks with no more than a few pages written on them. I wanted to remember the day we found out, to magnify the triumph when I finally get to write “Kicked cancer’s butt!” on the day she beat her disease. I wanted to put blind faith in that belief, because my mother is exceptional, and I need to believe so hard that she’d survive.

She’s the kind of mother many of my friends told me they wished they had. A single mom for 18 years now, she continually kept our family afloat: the warm, beating heart of our home.

One day, while she was giving my baby sister a bath, my brother and I started to have a water fight. Next thing we knew, she was joining in, not minding if we got the couch and furniture wet (we chased each other inside the house). She's the reason I grew up loving buttery, slimy, raw sashimi since she believes that it is important to try things before saying that we don’t like it.

Many nights before we would go to sleep, she would ask my brother and I to crawl into in her big bed with her for awhile so that we can have three different voices to read bedtime stories to my little sister. In college, I got tattooed on both wrists, and the next night, I suffered overwhelming regret for that drunken decision, irrationally fearing that I’d gotten HIV from the needles, that I called her immediately at 1am. Two hours and many miles later, she was beside me, telling me that it’s okay as I cried and told her I was sorry for failing her again.

One time, a friend texted me that she had nowhere to go after a fight with her parents at around 11pm that evening. I casually mentioned it to my mom, and she threw me a jacket, put hers on, called my friend and told her to wait for us; it was a three hour drive to where my friend was in a different city, and my mom wanted to keep her safe that night.

She broke up with her boyfriend of ten years, who drank a lot, because she said she didn’t need a man for her to survive. She's that kind of woman. She knows how to apologize to us when she is wrong, so that we would learn to admit to our mistakes too. She worked long hours before, usually being the first person her office calls when there is a crisis, but she never fails to be with us at the end of every day, cheering us for our little triumphs, consoling us through childhood grief, always guiding us and preparing us for when we’re ready to lead our own lives.

I look at her as she finally drifts off to sleep. She is bald now, since she shaved off all her hair in preparation for chemo. Her fingers and feet have turned black, and her lips have a grayish tint to it. She is pale, and her breathing is shallow, as she hugs the pillow close to her. That was the way we slept as kids, with pillows all around us, because she was always scared that we would fall off the bed and get hurt. We never did.

I stop myself from crying as I looked at her. I am not ready to not see her grin again, I am not ready to never hear her speak and laugh, and I am not ready to tell my baby sister that our mother is in heaven with the angels. I am not ready to let go of listening to her advice, I am far from ready to stop texting her “I love you so much” when I wake up, throughout the day, and before I go to sleep, and to have her reply, “I love you too.” I am not ready for her to stop asking if I still pray, of her calling me to see if I had already gone home after work. I am not ready to lose the confidence that comes from knowing that you are loved completely and absolutely for everything you are; I am not willing to let go of my sanctuary.

It’s an oddly overwhelming and disconcerting feeling to arrive at the moment when we realize that our parents are indeed human too. This usually happens around our twenties, when the red haze of puberty has finally dissipated and the irrational hatred for them is giving way to understanding because we are now trying to make our own way in the world.

I remember this drawing I gave as a gift to her when I was a kid, a superwoman wearing half work clothes, and half house clothes. That’s exactly how I see her: omnipotent, invincible, indestructible, forever strong. The feeling is akin to doom when I realized that those things are not true. My mom now needs help from her children, she needs our arms around her when she cries and sobs in a dark room because she’s scared of dying, because she feels so weak after each chemo session, because she still cannot believe that this is happening to her.

I looked at her as she finally drifts off to sleep. Bald now. She looks so delicate, like a baby, and my heart wants to burst from wanting to protect and take care of this woman who gave her whole life to us. I renewed my silent promise that I will do everything I can, even if it means commuting everyday after working long hours, cooking food that will usually go uneaten, listening to her talk about her day, and accompanying her on visits to the doctor. Even if it means never letting her know that I am scared, too. Even if it means holding her as she vomits then cleaning it up. I am lucky for having a mother so precious and wonderful, and it is my duty as her child to be strong for her now.

I got a fleece blanket and cover her slowly, takig care to not wake her up. I lean close, kiss her on the forehead, and whisper, “I love you so much. Sleep well.”

by Jamie Delos Reyes