hold on, mum

Hold on mum

Why can’t the best of us just live forever?

Why can’t we just donate years of our lives to ensure the most worthy of us have a few more to enjoy?

I know I’m a good person. I know I benefit those around me by my presence, my outlook on life, my positive vibes in their life - I’m making them happier whether they realize it or not. And I love that about myself.

But I’m a piece of shit. I am absolute shit when it comes to the really good people on this planet.

Like mum.

Oh god, mum.

Everything I’ve ever known about being a positive presence, I’ve learned from my mother. Everything I am, I owe to her. Every positive impact I’ve made on someone’s life - it’s not from me, it’s from her. She’s the best fucking person on this planet, the best person I, or anyone who has met her, has ever been around.

The nurses in her hospital, in her rehab facility, in the glorified fucking hospice she’s in right now - they all know it. They all see it. They all agree that it just isn’t fucking right that people like her are going to die and people like me get to live on.

And right now, I am no more than 20 miles away from her. Right fucking here, and I can’t see her. She might die tonight and I won’t have a chance to say goodbye. All I can do is sit here, drink, cry my fucking eyes out, and recognize the reality of the situation: that I might not have a chance to wish her well on her journey, might not have a chance to tell her how I feel one last time.

It isn’t a ‘gone too young’ situation. She’s about to turn 74, she’s led a rich and fulfilling life. She’s been battling cancer for so long - 14 years now, breast cancer, bone cancer, god knows how many other fucking cancers at this point - it’s a miracle that she’s lasted this long. But it’s still not enough.

I ‘made my peace’ over a year and a half ago. Yeah, that’s a crock of shit. What fucking peace can you have when your tortured soul lives on in spite of those vastly superior falling down around you? I flew out, emergency status, in October 2019, with the understanding that it would likely be the last time I ever saw her still breathing. But she recovered. She got better. I saw her not two months after that, a poor man’s holiday, coming out to visit right between Thanksgiving and Christmas because I wanted to celebrate both with her but it was just too expensive to fly out for either/or.

I never in a million years thought that would be the last time I saw her.

And God willing, it won’t be. I’m not a religious man, but I do believe in God, and I believe there’s no way a sentient, omnipotent being would let someone so pure and true and honest and incredible as my mother have that be the last time she could see her son.

I planned to get back out there in the Springtime. Summer, latest. I may not have had the money, but I saved up airline points for exactly such an occasion - to go home to see my mother whenever I possibly could. I planned to come out several times in 2020, regardless of my employment situation, my financial situation, my mental fucking state. It didn’t matter, I could fly out whenever I wanted, and I wanted to do so as much as possible.

And Covid hit.

And that became not a fucking option.

My mother has fucking cancer. A lot of fucking cancer. Her immune system is shot. She fits every last definition of an ‘at risk’ category. Coming out to see her would be akin to killing her myself.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And this bullshit just wasn’t going away. It became readily apparent that it wasn’t just a ‘wait it out and see’ situation, that I’d need to figure out some way to get back East without risking the life of the person who I love most in the world.

The most. it’s not even close. It never has been. The various loves of my life, nothing compared to her. The numbness I feel towards everyone on the planet - the love I show externally is absolutely nothing internally. I feel nothing anymore. I’ve been burnt too many times, and I’ve wrapped myself up in a fucking cocoon to insulate myself from the hurt I’ve felt in the past. Dead inside, no matter how much I may portray otherwise. Whatever, not healthy, but serviceable, functional, and really easy to make myself look OK when honestly, I’ve never been anything close to that.

That’s for everyone else - not mum. Mum is the distillation of love, the concentrated tincture, the purest form of the purest emotion on the planet. Both ways - both from her, and to her. No one has ever understood me the way she does. And even she doesn’t understand me. Hell, I don’t understand me. But she was the most reasonable facsimile thereof. IS. not was. FUCK. FUUUUUUCK

Every single person she’s ever interacted with loves her. Immediately. Unconditionally. She has that way about her. She ‘has a face’, just like the one I inherited from her. Her easy demeanor and casual extroversion was something I wished for my whole life, and only found once I made it to college. But she always knew I had it in me, she always pushed me to be myself, even as high school life made that so fucking difficult. “Kids can be so cruel,” she said, and it seemed so empty at the time - until years later, when I finally understood exactly what she was doing. It worked. It fucking worked. I may not be rich, I may not be successful, I may still not know what the fuck I’m doing with myself even 20 full years after high school is but a distant memory, but I do know I’ve evolved into an amazing human being, and it never would have happened if it wasn’t for her unconditional love, and unconditional encouragement.

3 arrests before I even turned 18 couldn’t discourage her from that belief. 2 more within a few years after that tried her patience sure, but still couldn’t stop her from believing in her son. I never deserved the love, the support, the belief that she gave me - but she never stopped giving.

And that’s the common thread throughout her life - she never stops giving. She devotes every last fiber of her being towards believing in people, it doesn’t matter if they’re worthy of it or not. She wholeheartedly believes that everyone around her is better than they ACTUALLY are. When people don’t believe in themselves, they gain strength because she believes in them. She knows they’re capable of more. That’s the most beautiful thing about her existence.

And the difference in our existences - because she believes it, and continues to believe it. I believe in people off the bat, get disappointed by so many disappointing motherfuckers on this planet, and continue to try to bring out the best in people knowing full well they aren’t nearly as great as I want them to be.

I hate that I’m going back and forward between past and present tense right now. But I think it's eminently understandable why.

i’m not 3000 miles away from mum right now, I’m about 20. And I can’t go see her because of this fucking global pandemic. I’m sitting in this fucking Extended Stay America hotel in Manchester fucking Connecticut, surrounded by goddamn deadbeat depressed disheveled divorcee dads, waiting out the quarantine timeline of a virus that I know for a fucking fact I don’t have, just to meet the guidelines that aren’t based on fucking shit, so I can go into a facility that my mum fucking hates, to see her, to fucking see her, to hold her fucking hand, all I want is to hold her fucking hand. I know I can’t hug her. I know I’ll have to wear a face shield and 3 masks just to walk in the door. I don’t care, I want to see her. Please God just let me fucking see her.

She’s dying. She’s 20 miles away from me and she’s dying. And I’m sitting here like an asshole and I can’t see her.

SHES RIGHT FUCKING THERE AND I CANT SEE HER AND SHE MIGHT DIE BEFORE I GET THE CHANCE TO SEE HER

Every day she lives is a blessing. For me. Probably not for her, because I’m sure she’s in the most immense pain that anyone has ever felt, as cancer wracks her body and shuts the door on any possibility of getting better.

Is she holding on just for me? Is that right? I know how selfish I am in even thinking that, so much more so in even wanting that. How the fuck am i supposed to reconcile this? I want her to continue to hurt so she lives long enough that I can see her? Is that right? No it’s not fucking right. Is it how I feel regardless? Yes it fucking is. Is that entirely fucked up? I think we both know the answer to that.

Hold on mum. Please hold on. I won’t be able to live it down if you go before I get a chance to see you, to hold your hand, to talk to you - even if it’s a one-way conversation - even if you can’t respond - I need to tell you how much you mean to me. I’m not good at that. I’m fucking terrible at that. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to tell anyone who means something to me WHAT they mean to me - most importantly and imminently the person who means the most to me in my life.

don’t die mum

please.

fuck. not yet. just not yet. please please not yet.

it’s the most selfish feeling on the fucking planet. She doesn’t want to be here - either at the rehab facility or on this fucking planet anymore. Yet here i am, selfish as all hell, begging internally for her to stick around just so I can see her. I try to tell myself she’s hanging on because she wants to see me but I don’t fucking know. I have no clue. I have no idea what she’s thinking. I feel like she wants to see me - but at what cost?

I’m so close, yet so far

cliche as fuck, but how else can you properly distill this? Fuck Covid.

But I’m here. finally. 16 months since my last visit. I’m here, and I still can’t see her. And it might not be enough.

I knew what this was, probably right around November of 2020. When she called, and said she wanted to see me. And said she wanted me to come home for the holidays. She’s not dumb, she knew I couldn’t do that. She knew Covid was preventing that from happening. And yet she threw it out there anyway. She knew she didn’t have much time left, or else she never would have even suggested it. And without her needing to tell me, I knew exactly what she was really saying.

And I looked into it. I looked into all of it. I tried to justify any way I could come out to visit. And none of it made sense. None of it was realistic. Cases were surging over Thanksgiving, there was only a 15% reduction in air travel over the holiday - things were already starting to surge and we only knew it would surge even more.

And it was true. Covid became a nightmare in Connecticut once again, just a few short months after it was deemed one of the most contained states in the Union. It was a mess. And it would have been a terrible idea to go at that point - traveling during a surge is the worst idea - even for someone who’s been known to bend the rules here and there when it comes to the pandemic.

I’ll bend the rules for a lot, but not for mum. I’m a piece of shit, but not to that extent. I can barely live with myself as it is, I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I contributed to my mum’s… health.

So when should I have gone? Holidays were out. Right after the holidays were out. But what about after that? Should I have gone in February? Yeah, probably. Honestly - probably. But I didn’t, I went to Texas instead. And she went to the hospital. And then she went to the goddamn rehab facility. And then back to the hospital, and back to the facility again - getting worse all the while. Is this Mother Earth telling me I fucked up? Was that my chance?

I just want to see her again. Please just let me see her again. I keep channeling my friend Sam, getting that one last chance to see him and talk to him and be with him and hold his hand - even though he wasn’t responsive and couldn’t reciprocate anything i was feeling at the time. It didn’t fucking matter. I talked. and talked. and talked and talked and talked. and told stories, and conveyed feelings, and left myself more bare than I ever had before in my life, just to tell him how I really felt even though I could barely do so when he was cognizant of my ability to do so.

I said my goodbye, and I know Sam felt it. Nothing can convince me otherwise. I may not have had that one last back-and-forth conversation with him, but a conversation I did indeed have. And I know he was there for it, whether he could respond or not - not even cancer could take that away from us. I spent an hour by his bedside, and we talked - one-sided albeit - but it was one of the best conversations we’d ever had. I miss Sam every day, but I cherish that last talk we had - even if it was myself doing the heavy lifting.

That’s all I ask with Mum.

Please give me one more chance. Please let me talk to her. Please let me see her, one more time. Please let me hold her hand, tell her how much i love her, tell her how much she means to me, send her off to God knows what, in the only way that makes sense to do so,

I love you mum. I want to tell you that, one more time. Please hold on. 2 more days. Please hold on that much longer.

I just want to say goodbye