At 2 a.m., I found myself in the yard, angry at Raj and screaming, “Poop, dammit, poop. Doesn’t anyone have any consideration for me?” All night long I sat in my father’s old recliner with an armful of warm, sleeping dog.
Each morning of my mother’s hospitalization, I drove in the early morning across the lightening plains to arrive in time for the doctor’s morning rounds. I traveled on roads and highways I have known all my life. From these mornings driving to see Betty, I will remember the lights going on in the little white houses; the tall display horse rising from the dark at Hobby Horse in Centralia; Raj waiting behind the steering wheel, gazing at me from the window as I came from Casey’s with doughnuts. (Betty didn’t always get hers.)
. . .
The faces on the elevator to the oncology floor became familiar. We nodded at one another and were so courteous. On the elevators, we were so determined to let others exit first that the doors practically closed before any of us got out.
Before Betty’s biopsy, the radiologist started talking about nodes in Betty’s spleen and abdomen. “No more parts,” I wanted to cry out. “You cannot add any more parts.”
Sitting outside the room where she had been taken for the test, I heard her scream. The anesthetic was administered through a needle in her spine. No more of this, I vowed. I would take her home and lift her into bed and wait with her for all the pain to end. But I didn’t really want that. I was ready for anything, but I still didn’t want her to die.
The morning after the tests, before she told us we had to leave the hospital, our doctor mentioned lymphoma again. All night long, Betty’s stomach had been in an uproar. She was sicker that day than any other. But we had to leave the hospital. The tests were over. There was nothing else they could do and she had to go.
As we were getting her ready, a caseworker appeared to question us about who would care for her at home or whether she would be going to some sort of facility, as they strongly recommended.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Who cares what you recommend? You send her out of here when she is terribly sick and then you come in here and pretend you care what is going to happen to her?”
Sensing the possibility of battle, Betty perked up.
“That’s not really the situation,” the caseworker said.
“Well, then what is the situation?” I asked, before the woman made her exit.
As I wheeled my mother down, she looked at me and said, “You’ve taken good care of me.”
. . .
All the way home, Betty lay in the backseat with her head on her hand. Raj sat with me up front. “We’re almost home,” I said when we hit Centralia, then again when we turned on C, then on T, then finally, over and over, as we headed east on 15.
The next day we waited and waited for the doctor to call with the test results. At 5:30, the phone rang and the doctor, munching what sounded like an apple, confirmed the lymphoma diagnosis.
Betty vomited all night. I did not sleep and found myself throwing the ribs I had made for her homecoming into the trash as the sun came up. It was a shame. I had finally cooked them right.
. . .
That morning, before we left for the oncologist’s, I found Raj by Betty’s bed. Though he is never supposed to enter her room, he is fond of her Kleenexes, winter boots, and house slippers. Oddly enough, he will not touch the one thing I would love to see destroyed—the sandals we have warred over for so long. Labradors apparently prefer pumps.
I let Betty wear the sandals to the oncologist’s, edging her tender feet into them.
“Is this dog neutered?” Betty asked me on the drive over.
I nodded. “I guess you’re not going to get to be a grandmother,” I told her.
“I never wanted to be a grandmother,” she replied. I could think of several reasons why she might have said this. One is that it is the truth. One is that she wanted to keep me from feeling bad about not having children. I told myself it was the latter, but I think it was both. My mother hates to be called “ma’am.” I don’t see her loving “Grandma.”
. . .
In the office of Dr. Tennan, the oncologist, I waited, in a chair that smelled like it was sick, for Betty to be called. I watched my mother, her last looks before learning she was dying.
But I was wrong. It turned out I was wrong about it all.
Dr. Tennan, a very good-looking man, flirted a little with my mother, told her she didn’t look her age, said nothing about dying. He recommended treatment: two weeks of daily radiation (painless he assured us) and several more weeks of IV infusions. It wasn’t chemo; a different drug is more effective with lymphoma. It wouldn’t make her sick or cause her to lose her hair or suffer in any way. He said there was no reason not to go forward with it.