Mr Printz and I are back in the Bay – him for work, me to tag along. I spent yesterday traveling up to the city to visit work friends. Really, I just hung around the office all day and chatted with people when they didn’t look busy. Sidenote: I love Hopelab and everyone who works there so much.
Taking the BART up to Embarcadero and walking around the Financial District had me feeling very nostalgic. “Oh look, there’s the escalator where I fell and ripped my ankle open!” But really, I used to walk to the Ferry Building on my lunch break, talking to my mom on the phone, telling her about all the things I wanted to show her when she came to visit. I never did get the chance to do that, and it’s a shame. She would have loved all the bougie shops and their gourmet chocolates and cheeses. She would have loved seeing where I worked, and how different San Francisco was from the time she spent there 20 years ago. She would have been scared on the escalators and grumpy when I forgot to pack her a snack – it would have been fabulous.
Talking to colleagues that I hadn’t seen in person since I resigned to move back to Kansas brought up a lot of things I’ve been working to move through or past or something. For the first time in a long time, I had a nightmare about the time I spent with mom in hospice, one that I’ve had before: that it wasn’t over; that even though she had already died, we had to go through it all again. Sometimes, I feel like I was so…ungracious in the process of my mom dying. It was probably the hardest, most painful thing I’ve ever had be a part of. I remember one day she looked at me and said, “This is really hard. This: just waiting to die.”
I always feel the need to say: 1) mom had always indicated to me that she didn’t want to do chemo if it looked like she was close to the end, 2) she made me her medical power of attorney and did not have the cognitive capacity to make the decision herself, and 3) my siblings and I all agreed that we didn’t think mom ever really wanted to do treatment at this stage.
Still, I think I will always feel responsible for it, and I will always feel guilty. Could she have had 2 years with her grandbaby? Could we have taken her to the beach she always wanted? Is it my fault? Did I bully everyone into it? Was I so unwilling to do the hard work of watching my mom continue to suffer, of facilitating that suffering, that I convinced everyone that hospice was the right option?
No one else can answer these questions for me. There might not even be a clear cut “yes” or “no.” It might be the grayest of gray areas in my life, and I will just have to live with it. But I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t get there sooner. I am sorry I was not more willing to push my mom to tell me what was going on. I am sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to do everything I could to keep her alive as long as we could, knowing she would die within the next two years, regardless of all of my efforts. I am sorry I didn’t spend more time sitting with her, that I was too restless and afraid to just be quiet and still. I am sorry that I couldn’t save her, though I know it was not ever my responsibility to do the impossible.