Part Two: The War Inside Four Walls

Cancer.

A six-letter word that echoes as if it has been shouted into the deepest canyons.

You are nine.

The house looks like a flower shop. The freezer fills with food. The phone rings, and your heart races before anyone answers, frightened of what the person on the other end might know.

You stop sleeping through the night.

What if she dies and you are not there?

There are flowers everywhere.

You want YOUR mom.

The one who was always busy, always doing something. Full of light and joy and, honestly, almost annoyingly happy.

Now she is stowed away in a dark room, recovering from brutal chemotherapy. She is throwing up. She is confused about what day it is.

You miss her while she is still in the house.

A Breast, a Wig & Hope.

Your parents are still married when your mother loses a breast.

When her hair first starts falling out, you shave her head.

Outwardly, she handles one breast and no hair with the grace and humor that would make Dolly Parton proud.

And I consider Dolly a fairly high standard.

Your mother adopts a wig named Desire.

Apparently, her name is actually Désirée (dez-ih-RAY).

You find this out later in life, and it makes you giggle. Your mom needed this to be funny. For you.

Chemo is scheduled on your tenth birthday.

You get a desk.

You are not entirely sure what to make of this birthday.

Things are getting weird around here.

You live blood test to blood test.

Nine years.

Approximately 3,287 days. 78,888 hours. 4,733,280 minutes. 283,996,800 seconds.

A frightened nine-year-old does not care about leap years.

She knows how many of those seconds she spent asking for more.

Nine years is an excruciating amount of time to be afraid your mother will die.

You want more.

Your mother reaches remission.

Then your parents’ I do becomes I don’t.

She divorces your father.

The trauma has metabolized differently inside the walls of their hearts. Your mother wants to live. He wants to get back to the long-term plan.

A better tomorrow.

Remember that phrase.

One home becomes two. Neither is safe.

I Do. I Don’t. I PPO.

Your father stays single. Your mother needs PPO insurance and a hip replacement.

Her next I do comes with an I PPO.

You have considerable objections to the man attached to the policy: his responsibility, his work, his habits.

You are in eighth grade. A week before the wedding, your mother says:

“I need the insurance to live, Kris. But I won’t marry him if you say so.”

Oh, sure. An eighth grader can solve this riddle.

You refuse to answer.

You want her alive. You do not want him.

You need both of those things to be allowed in the same sentence.

She marries him.

As her illness progresses, your dad is lost at the center of his own universe. Your mom is somewhere between pain pills, cancer riddling her body, and the dead weight of a husband.

You look around.

Who is in charge here?

At school, the bell rings, and a pit forms in your stomach. You have no idea what you are walking into when you get home.

Your best friend gives you somewhere else to go.

Cowboy Girl

She stands beside you. Always. She understands you. She has your back.

She is your home. Your safe place.

You, meanwhile, handle peer conflict.

Any and all.

If her boyfriend is being an asshole, you take over the text messages.

“Kristin…”

He knows.

Excellent. Then introductions are unnecessary.

Your house allows later nights and teenage decisions with limited consequences.

Her mother runs a tight ship.

You never want to get in trouble there. You are afraid of disappointing her. She does the pickups, the drop-offs, the ordinary work of making sure you get somewhere and someone comes back for you.

She makes a home-cooked dinner. It is ready on time.

You pray. You talk. You connect.

Things your own mother insisted on before she was dying.

There is something familiar here that you miss.

She makes you eat things that do not appear on a kids’ menu, but often makes a side of macaroni and cheese just for you.

Her house has structure and love.

It also has sobriety checkpoints.

When you come home on the weekends, she smells you.

Smoke.

Your father has a wood-burning stove. There is always a fire.

Both are conveniently true.

“Okay,” she says, but promises to verify tomorrow morning that you were, in fact, at your father’s house earlier that night.

There is an older sister you adore. A funny brother who hogs the family computer. And an uncle with Down Syndrome, whom you love.

Everyone he loves gets a funny nickname.

Yours is Cowboy Girl.

It is an honor to be loved by this entire family.

Every year, you and your best friend write letters to Santa with him.

You have a place in all of this. The dinners. The letters. The family.

I love them.

My best friend and her mother love me through what I cannot survive alone.

Do as I Say, Not as I…

Your mother’s husband is a walking contradiction.

Get good grades, says the adult whose business fits inside the garage alongside of a parked car.

Smoking is bad, says the adult whose own smoking costs him equal custody.

Do as I say, not as I do, becomes familiar.

At one house, illness explains the behavior.

Managing her pain becomes its own ordeal. The medication is necessary. The changes to her mood brings more upheaval into an already volatile home.

At the other, stress is apparently at the epicenter.

Everyone seems to have a viable excuse.

You are not extended this courtesy, though.

Your fear, your anger, your teenage behavior are deemed unacceptable.

Bothersome, even.

The adults are doing the best they can. You are expected to do better.

Getting someone to come rescue you requires ingenuity you shouldn’t need in high school.

One afternoon, it requires a fax to your father’s entire office.

He gets that one message.

On Sundays, you go to Mass.

The distance between what looks good and what happens behind closed doors keeps growing.

Even a glass door shatters with a shove.

On another night, at your best friend’s house, you wander downstairs. It is probably early morning. Her mother is awake.

She asks why you aren’t sleeping.

You want to tell her everything. But what's ordinary in your home is exactly what she would want to protect her daughter from.

You cannot let the truth cost you your best friend.

You ask her to please never take her daughter away from you. And please, don’t tell anyone.

She pinky promises both.

You trust her.

Then you tell her everything.

She is the only adult you confess to.

She keeps her promises.

She loves you, too.

A Sandwich, a Side of Chips & the Beginning of the End

You make your mother promise to tell you the truth about how sick she is.

You believe knowing will prepare you.

She knows you like the sandwiches at the Wolfgang Puck café inside Gelson’s. So here you are, in the Valley.

A sandwich, a Diet Coke, and chips.

“Kris, it’s the beginning of the end,” she blurts out.

The table is small. The grocery store is busy.

There should be somewhere else for this. Somewhere aesthetic, at least. A view to soften the blow. Some privacy. Mood lighting, perhaps.

You have no idea what the appropriate décor is for losing your mother.

But surely not a fucking Valley grocery store.

She promises she will watch you graduate.

But she also promised she would see you down the aisle. Hold your hand through childbirth.

You remember those promises. You were building a life around them.

Your mind is loud and blank at the same time.

You need your best friend.

So far, she has successfully been able to swallow all of your pain.

And someone needs to fix my entire life. Immediately.

You want your mom to make it better.

She can’t.

You leave.

You do not remember what happens next.

There is a voicemail you will save for a decade.

“Hey, Kris. Just checking in on you, seeing how you’re doing.”

You’re dying. That’s how I’m doing.

I don’t think I returned that call for a few days.

When I did, it was the guilt others had projected onto a teenager that did the dialing.

Apparently, I was supposed to walk my mother to the end of her life hand in hand, quietly and gracefully, with the hindsight of my fifty-year-old self. Comfort her, compose yourself, consider your future regrets.

I was eighteen, and I needed someone to take my hand, too.

I was trying to breathe in the thin air of a room where my mother was withering away.

They were adults. They knew something about the process of dying.

So far, my experience with loss involved cats that ran away or became casualties of wildlife.

We replaced the cats.

So what’s the play, guys?

Because I don’t have it.

What am I wearing tonight?

You run fast and hard.

There is a Valley party.

It is 2007.

You cannot save her life. You cannot save your own.

But you can figure out tonight.

Go Be a Dove

One day, your mother announces that she will die and return as a dove.

Things are getting weird again.

You are still trying to overturn her death sentence.

She is planning her return flight.

She also announces she has a squirrel friend.

And, what do you know, she does.

Feeds it. Pets it.

Your mother is befriending wildlife while preparing to leave the world.

Meanwhile, she needs help getting to the restroom.

She falls, and you help her up.

Both of you cry.

She wants you close. She is trying to comprehend leaving you earthside without meaningful support.

You are trying to comprehend being left.

“You will regret not spending more time with her.”

As though you have not been counting the time since you were nine.

You need help being there.

You are told to be there more.

Your best friend comes with you to the hospital.

You cannot go alone. You cannot stay too long. You need her beside you to help keep you present when everything in your body wants to escape what you see.

She understands that wanting to leave does not mean wanting your mother gone.

She comes with you. She stays beside you.

Your mother still sends you off with instructions.

“Bye, girls. Love you. Make good decisions.”

You don’t.

She knows.

For a moment, she gets to be your mom sending two girls out into the world with advice they will selectively observe.

You get to hear her say goodbye.

June 18, 2007: Promises Kept

Nine days after your high school graduation.

She kept her promise.

You still needed more time.

The phone rings at four in the morning.

You are already awake.

You know.

Footsteps down the hall.

“Kris, your mom passed. Let’s go.”

You go.

Your mother is dead in front of your eyes.

You say goodbye. You say you love her.

Then you walk outside to sit on the porch swing and wait for the coroner.

This time, there are no instructions.

No love you.

No make good decisions.

The sun rises on a hot Valley morning.

The newspaper arrives. The trash gets picked up.

Why the fuck are ordinary things happening?

Your mom just died.

They can keep their newspaper.

Ordinary things happen even when your life has temporarily paused.

You sit on the swing.

You spent nine years afraid your mother would die while you were asleep and you wouldn’t be there.

This morning, you were awake.

You weren’t there.

And the newspaper still came.