Molly Pastori
Stories (1/0)
Mom’s Last Page
She sat across from me in that room and we waited. We both knew each other better than to fill the silence with conversation. I felt slightly nauseous at what news would soon be delivered by, I assume, a well-bred doctor that gave this news to many families over the years. I was right. His kind eyes and straightforwardness were appreciated and seemed well practiced, which saddened me even further. My mom sat stoic and absorbed the words I knew she was expecting. After he left, we both looked at each other and understood there would be nothing more done here. No rounds of this or transfusions of that. She was done. She had been done years ago when my father passed. She had told me this numerous times since she we moved in together some 3 years back. What prompted all of this, was that my mom had begun to turn a kind of yellow color a few months back. She was becoming more and more tired, putting her head on the table after dinner to be woken up by me encouraging her to get to bed a half an hour later. She had MS since I was in 8th grade, making her around 40 then. She was 76 when she passed, it had nothing to do with her MS. Within a week of turning a sickly yellow, she was scanned and a biopsy concluded she had bile duct cancer. Who knew that was really a thing? I knew about pancreatic cancer and how that had a terrible end so I imagined this would be very similar. It was.
By Molly Pastori 3 years ago in Families