Nothing as it was before

Just the other day I cried to my mom because while I have spend the last 3 weeks visiting home, I realized how selfish I have become and how I like it that way. I mean its easy to be selfish when you live in a studio apartment by yourself, in a different city nonetheless. I am away from everyone by choice, in a self proclaimed decision of building a new life in a new place. My calendar is stacked with plans, dreams and a job I love, everything is moving so fast. Its like I am running on a balance beam knowing, I am bound to overthink a step and fall flat on my face one of these days.

Well today is that day.

I texted my guy friend, who used to be an almost boyfriend, about wishing I made more money or had a husband. I wailed about how no matter what I will be fine, financially, physically, but how I feel like everything is going too good, I have a feeling something has to happen.

Well today is that day.

as a writer of the dramatics, I could not have written this better myself. A family of four, two grandparents on my mom side, both alive. Knowing that impending end will come in the next few years. Health focus scares is all on them. That is hard, but it happens with age, everything gets a little harder, dying becomes an absolute not a concept. My brother and his wife have a baby on the way in November, a boy, just like my brother was the first in our family. Its kind of poetic if you think about it. Their life is hectic, my sister in law just started the position she had been working towards, and found out she was pregnant all in the same 3 months. My brother just applied for this job after shifting his dream to his own instead of the dreams my dad had for him, and he just had the interview for that today. Their life is full, ever consuming and entirely constant. My dad is finally considering retiring. Something we didn't even know if he wanted to do, by the way he slaves each day at work. He is adding improvements to a place he has spent the last 32 years at, refurbishing it to someday soon leave it. I don't know what he will do when he does, but he is finally ready to start thinking about the next 20 years of his life, and maybe he will dream to do something actually fun with it.

Then there is my mom. She is the home to our foundation. Her life since having us, has been my brother and I and whatever and wherever our dreams have taken us. For me, Denver, where she visits me often and the occasional trips I drag her to or invite her on. For my brother, she is his safe space, aside from his wife of course. She also is a big factor on what keeps his world from face planting. Whether that is camp doggie day care, a place to crash when it all gets to much or the center fold to our family. My mom keeps it all together and never asks for anything in return, other then for us to love her. In all of our busy lives she is our constant, she is the steady in our twirling and growing worlds.

So of course, the words Cancer, happens to the one that always seems to be the most capable. The one who keeps us operating while she is in the background feeling out of sorts. Theres something devastating about that word. Its like as soon as it is spoken into existence, the idea of death become imminent and possible. Theres the person you were before that word and the person you are after. Its no longer, oh there is something wrong with her gall bladder, and now something that has a name that has taken someone each of us has known. A name that feels objectively different, more serious.

I think my mom knew this in some shape or form. I think she has spent her whole life being capable to the point of nearly invincible. I think she knew something could be really wrong, but it was easier to rewrite a new eating habit, then subject herself to there being a problem. I can't blame her, the world we live in, the word she created for us, never had her written as the main character. She keeps everyone else going, so when something is wrong with her, we find ourselves in a new place. One our world don't typically notice. how are we going to come together to be the strength she has always been for us?! I know she is scared, each of us are, but there still so much we don't know yet.

I read this instagram post some woman in 30s wrote and it has stuck with me. She said as we step into our 30's death no longer becomes distant, it becomes relevant. health issues arise, in both yourself and your parents. It goes from knowing one person who died once, to a connection to someone who has lost someone. Today, I am feeling the immensity of that statement. In the last month two of my friends told me about their parents similar health scares, with the C word being dropped in the same sentence. Today when I found out, the battle between hysterical hyperventilation crying and my frontal lobe working its hardest to keep me logical; I had a strong urge to call that friend and see how she was doing. You see, my mom asked me to keep this close to my chest. A smart request as in a panic I may call my whole contacts list to try to convince me what my logical side already knows. Which is we really don't know anything, other than there is a mass in her ovaries and she will be sitting waiting for her turn in the ER the next 24 hours. But in that moment of finding out, I wanted to call that friend, because I was going through the same out of control panic, I know she went through recently, and knowing this I wanted to give her a big hug of " I get it now". Because honestly, you don't understand, till you do. You were the person before the C word is in play, and you are the person you are after. It no longer your friend's mom has cancer - how will you help her though this, and becomes, my mom has cancer - how am I going to do this and help her through this.

I didn't call, and instead I took my raw, short breathed, terrified feelings to the one place they have always felt the most safe, Vocal. Where you can be seen, but not known, or known, but not seen. I am sure that friend is probably reading this whenever I have the go ahead to post it, and for that, lets share a "I get it now" hug when I see you next.

When you hear your moms trembling voice on the other side of the line, the only thing you can do is be strong. Because your feelings are not the most important in moment. Being in this situation, your brain goes to places you only ever joked about before. Just this last week, I was cleaning out her closet that contained bits and pieces of the last decade of our lives. I found things from my brothers college era and books from when I was a child. I also found letters from my mom when she was my age. I stopped and read through them briefly, idolizing her words that felt like a part of her I know and yet someone I never got to meet. She wrote to her parents about rent, and having to do taxes while owning a business, in a time that was once as chaotic as mine feels. I cleared through boxes and boxes of card making supplies, really learning her creativity went beyond something I ever fully understood. I sat there, in a mirror of recollection that when her life ends, she wont just have her most recent and best known photo, printed in a big frame. She will have tables of the hand made Christmas cards she sent out throughout the years. She will have a table of her designs she curated, so people can see how her brain processes and designed. She will have decades on decades of printed photos of the people in her life. She is so much more then a life of a picture where people stand and send their best wishes.

And to think, I was thinking about this and getting emotional, before the news I got today. Uncertainty has a way of tainting your thoughts. Where earlier today I was watching suits and doing the dishes to surprise her, on my last day before flying back to Denver after spending three weeks home with the family. As someone as sentimental as me, this all feels like it happening for a reason. My mind recently has been telling me something was going to change. I texted a friend today saying " why is life testing me to differentiate family and money right now". I have had so many little priority shifts being asked of me lately. Buying concert tickets, then getting offered to photograph a dream wedding, then convincing myself, somehow I can make both people happy. Fully knowing by doing this, I am probably going to disappoint someone regardless. Then needing to buy plane tickets to be a part in big baby family moments and trying to navigate that with my income and commitments. I knew the world was telling me something, through small acts of inconvenience for a reason.

Today I found out that reason.

Today, was news of the utter most inconvenience. Where unknown problems came with a timeline of possible endings. Endings I didn't want to have to think about for at least the next 20 years. Endings that start to spark the reality of no longer adding first times with someone, but experiencing first times without them. he amount of time I have with her. A person who has spent her life making my life possible, Now we live a life is about to get really hard, because I know she wont be there as much anymore and I have to find the balance between the life I have in Denver and the balance of not knowing how much time I have with her.A thought that breaches my mind with an uncontrollable wave of grieve of the unknown. She is my person, I know my absence will be felt, and I know she doesn't want me to change my life for her, but she may need me without saying it.

As the child who moved away, what do I do? Upon knowing more, if its imminent, the logical thing would be to move home. Because time cant be traded for missed opportunities. However, where I live now, has been where I found my most genuine life. Made connections, friend's, maybe not that can carry me through losing my mom, but ones that are the foundation of the life I have built for myself now. Activities that could get me out of the hole of her not being on the other end of every phone call. I mean what will I do if that happens. She has been my person in a world to be my best friend and teammate unconditionally. She would be the person who would get me through losing her. So although I know I am capable enough to do it, because she taught me to be. How am I supposed to do it. Who am I supposed to lean on, when she has always been that person.

I don't have any of these answers. Honestly, there not Im not sure i have en processed any of this. I have spoken the words out loud, trying to make sense of something still so unknown. I don't think I will be able to handle it till I have to. My brother and his wife are handling the at home part of it. They are strong, united and hopeful. My mom has an army of friends who will step up for her as she has their whole lives. My dad, will handle it as he does. He feels it beyond the worry I know, but the only coping skill he has is to show up and be there. I do not fear my dads response now, only if we do lose her from this. My grandparents, her parents care so much. Even my grandpa who never really shows her the love he has for her. They will be there for her as long as they are still alive and well themselves. Then there is me, I am her person. I am the girl who dragged her to walk across Portugal and Spain with me, where we recently spend a month and a half handling hard, and being there for each other. But that just it, I'm not there. My plane landed last night in Denver and although there is a comforting wave of being back in my own apartment, the separation from this feels dreamlike. I woke up this morning thinking, my mom has cancer, what now? What do I do with his information, how am I supposed to feel. Scared? Worried? relieved that I am 800 miles from watching her in pain. Yes to all of them.

Today I woke up and everythng has shifted, I missed a meeting that I shouldn't have, but it was a reminder, that maybe thats not where my priorities should be at the moment. I wanted to call my mom and tell her, but now everything feels different. I dont want to burden her with my mistakes, my own emotion navigation of this. But on the other hand I know she want to know my life.That it would be a greater misfortune to keep her from it then include her. So I don't know. Just like I keep telling her we will handle this step by step, focusing on each step just like on the Camino.