My mother has different voices that I have learned to identify over the years. The one that is soft and measured with a tinge of quiver and an apologetic tone, is never one I enjoy hearing because I know it is about to deliver bad news.
“Honey, I have to tell you something … Everything is ok, so please do not worry, but I was just … uh … diagnosed with cancer …”
Though I had braced myself, the words still drifted from her mouth, entered my ears, and bounced around in my head for what seemed like days, and then I went numb.
Scanning her face for any trace of emotion, but seeing none, I realized that she was waiting for my response before reacting.
My tongue failed me, but something inside warned me; do not look at her with those eyes.
You know the eyes I am referring to—the ones covered with apologies, pity, and sorrow.
The “poor you” eyes, and the “I am so sorry” eyes that everyone wears when they know you are ill. The looks that remind you of your illness even on the days you would like to forget, and those who treat you as if you are already gone.
If I could do nothing else to ease the moment and the challenges ahead, the least I could do was promise to never look at her through or with those eyes.
Instead, let me be the one to shield and protect her from hearing the whispers, seeing the fingers pointed her way, and stopping others from simply turning her into “that person with cancer.” She was and would always be so much more than that, despite the fact that cancer was now a part of all of our realities.
I hugged her and told her that we would face this together, and then quickly boxed away the news until I sat in the doctors’ waiting room at one of the prominent cancer centers in the United States.
What were they going to tell me? There are so many types of cancer, different stages, different symptoms, and different treatments. How much of her body had been affected? Did this have anything to do with her skin allergies over the last few years? I felt sick to my stomach, but optimistically hopeful—whether that was wishful thinking or not, my mother always taught me; “Don’t worry until you have to.”
As I sat listening to her doctors tell me that my mother had—at best—three years to live, almost with the same inflection and interest someone tells you what they had for dinner, I was enraged.
How could they be so callous, so matter of fact, so compassionless? (And no, I don’t buy that they have to be detached, objective, and all the other counter-intuitive teachings many physicians claim to have learned in medical school).
How could they dare attempt to predict when someone’s life would end, and say it aloud so that it might become self-fulfilling?
Most importantly how could they choose to deliver such news with my mother sitting by my side?
How did they think that their statements might affect her psyche, her day-to-day choices, her mind, body and most importantly, her spirit and strength needed to fight against this insidious disease?
How in the world could those words do anything but damage? Sure there would be tough days ahead, difficult treatments, and the possibility that we had limited time, but taking away someone’s hope all together just seems cruel and counter-intuitive to allow them to heal or at least fight as long as possible.
As the knot in my stomach grew, I heard another one of my mother’s voices—the one of pure joy.
As I was jolted back into reality, I looked across my living room noticing that my mom had managed to find the magic spot under my son’s chin that sends him into the most intoxicating laugh that can melt the heart of a fifty-year-old man who doesn’t even like kids.
