Cancer Earth Dog

It's 1:45 AM on the day of reckoning. The computer keeps freezing and my 20-year-old cat is meowing at me as I move the laptop outside to smoke. We can only hope by the time I finish this book I won’t be inhaling these horrible cancer sticks. How dare I keep smoking, that’s how my mother’s life ended so early. She was a cancer earth dog. Born on the 25th of June, 1958. A birthday perfectly placed 6 months before Christmas. If you are into horoscopes you may find it ironic, she died so abruptly in her cancer earth dog year, the 18th of March 2018. She would have been 60. If you don’t understand the irony, just google it. Cancer-Earth-Dog.

Today, is the day, 15 years, three different degrees; one official piece of paper. Graded today. I could have been so many things, been qualified for so many occupations. An IT specialist, a sociologist, a philosopher, a teacher, a marketing manager, a journalist. My original aspirations to become a journalist saw me study 21 courses of a BA of Communication (useless), 21 courses of a BA of Education (why would anyone become an educator for that kind of money and unappreciated efforts) and finally, 8 courses of a BA of Journalism (a now obsolete discipline/qualification). 15 years of University only to find myself lost, confused and jaded at a world where the climate is changing so exponentially; environmentally and socially. As I wait for the sunrise, I already know I finished with a 90% high distinction and GPA over 5. It’s the principle that today’s the day, the 22nd of the 11th month, 2019. Today, in just a few short hours, I am officially finished. Degree done. Mum would be proud. I finished it for her. I worked hard to be great at English, but maths was my first love. Because maths is definite. There’s only one right answer. But life is English, there’s never just one right answer. There’s an infinite number of right answers.

I’m blessed to have her sister in my life. A scholar who can edit this book, a brilliant mind who’s become the last of the family I have any communication or connection with (I haven’t asked her to edit the book yet). I’m blessed to have a great love of hers to read this book, she was 21 when she aborted his son Tom. I’m blessed at 33 to be able to try to write this book. I'm insane, OCD, autistic, bipolar, I'm depressed as shit because of everything that’s happened thus far. I am all these things. And, I am willing. Willing to make this. Because in the face of adversity, what hasn’t killed me yet is only making me stronger. I promised my mother so much, so much that she will never see in the flesh. But she speaks to me from the other side, all the time. Call me schizophrenic. Did I mention I helped her complete a psychology degree? She was computer illiterate, ridden with phobias (you’ll understand why later if I ever finish this preface) and dyslexic. She insisted we complete every assessment together of her Psychology Degree, but never excepted my input only urged me for my criticisms. And she expected the same from me in every aspect of our life together. She was my mother but that was just the start (cue birthing canal). I was her world, her saviour, her undying obsession. Her project. Her chance for a new life. Her inspiration to go on. I’d like to end the paragraph there, but this is a book. My first book. Her book she should be writing now. She was my father, she was my referee, my sounding board, my only unbiased voice for advice. She was my soulmate and my best friend. What my mother was to me was everything.

As I said to the doctors, the day they told me she would die, nothing was left unsaid for us. No regrets. We didn’t even need to say goodbye. That devilish day, the day she died, I left space for everyone else to grab at the opportunity to tell my mother not to go. Laura was many things to many people. But her family did not witness it. Laura was an actor. Her talents exhibited best on many stages in front of her family. Her life was a movie set. Her family didn’t know her. She wanted it that way from the day she was raped at 13. As her mother said, it was her fault it happened. A hundred phone calls made it ring true. She had become such a private person in her final years, but on that devilish day everyone knew. I stopped answering the phone at 100, that was enough. I needed to grieve too. 10 days I stayed awake, I couldn’t let go of her final day. Mum loved the sunrise. She was a true romantic. I knew when I finally laid my head to rest, the rest of my life would begin. The rest of my life without Laura. My mother kept diaries of her whole life and wished it would be a book one day. She always wrote so honestly. "What’s the point in faking the truth?" she said. So, this is her wish come true. Her legacy. But I make no promises because if I finish the job another part of Laura will come to an end. These are my words, now let me give you her's.