“They” say time heals all wounds. One can readily admit to the physical side of this. What takes longer is the emotional toll of watching one of the most important people in your life die from an aggressive cancer while locked in a similar battle of your own.
Then, they are gone, and there is the relief in knowing there is no more suffering, while harboring the conflicting emotion of wanting them here. Time goes on. Those mixed up emotions are accumulated, and held tight, sometimes locked down, imprisoned. Coveted. Pulled out. Put away again. It is cyclic. No one knows when the pattern will break, become less regimented, less invasive. Everyone is different.
I haven’t written out here since August. Thinking back to that month and what was going on, I can only shake my head. The head shaking – it’s partly wonderment at how we got through it, and partly denial, the “I still can’t believe any of this happened,” way of thinking.
I’ve spent a lot of time these past months dwelling on 2019. From my mother’s, “I’m having trouble swallowing, it feels like a lump in my throat,” to everything that happened after. I have one word for it. Surreal.
It seemed before I knew it, I was having my final moment’s with her, she was taking that one final breath, I was speaking final words to her. They were, of course, “I love you. I love you so much.”
So many endings this year. After she passed, I spent weeks at her house, packing up her belongings. It was hard, yet cathartic, in a strange way. I was with her, felt closer to her among her things. Before I would move an item, I’d have the thought, she put this here, she folded this towel, she put this dish away, she used this soap, she, she, she . . .
I told a friend, “I feel like I’m packing up her life.”
We sold the house. No longer can I go and play Scrabble with her, drink coffee. Talk. Laugh. (and yes, work my fanny off ’cause mom always had a list. Any of you reading this who knew her, knew she liked things a “certain” way.)
I wish she was here to give me a list. I wish she was here so I could call her. I wish she was here so I could hear her laugh – in real time – because yes, I can still hear her in my mind. I wish.
She was sick in this picture – but still wanted to . . . well. You know. Beat the pants off me.
The pastor at Hospice House asked me when we first arrived if I had any regrets. At that time, I said “No.” Now that I’ve done all this thinking, I will change that to “yes.” I regret she had cancer. I regret she couldn’t fight it. I regret the treatments didn’t work. I regret knowing how badly she wanted to live, yet how badly she wanted to die. I regret she suffered in her final weeks. I regret denying her the ability to talk to me honestly about her fears, her awareness of what was happening to her. THIS ONE most of all.
I thought I was protecting her by not discussing the whys and whats of this decision she’d made. I thought by not talking about that gigantic, overwhelming, trumpeting ELEPHANT in the room, she would continue to hope, to believe. I wanted her to think she was going to be okay, and she would drift off into her permanent sleep believing that.
I know now this is not how she thought. My mother was secretive about certain things. Maybe (most likely) she thought she was protecting me. So we did this dance of denial with one another. I’m not dying. You’re not dying.
What I don’t regret, could never regret. Being with her, every single step of the way.
How I remember her. Vibrant. Well. Happy.
I know the tone of the post may seem heavy, laden with sadness, awash with forlorn sentiments, but it’s really about reflection. The year is almost over. And while all may not be bright, we are filled with hope 2020 will be kinder, gentler, in every way possible.
This was one of her favorite songs. Like Elvis’s mother, Mom loved roses, and grew them in her yard. Sleep peacefully among your angels, Mom.
Her birthday is today. It’s been eight days since she left. I miss her. I will miss her even more as time passes. I spoke at her funeral service and I want to share what I said. Many of you have seen some of the pictures on Facebook I posted of her, plus the obit, but there was so much more to Mom, and this is simply another small part of who she was. I could have said so much more, but the most important thing is she knew my heart, and I knew hers. That’s all that mattered.
The Valley
You were born in Lewiston, Maine, in the summer of ‘36, the only child of Mildred Foster Fournier and John Henry Fournier.
Virginia Marie Fournier Davis on left, with niece, Diana.
You lived in Auburn with five older brothers and two older sisters, so there’s a chance you might have been spoiled – just a little bit. You loved your home state, your parents and siblings, but you loved Dad more. While on a business trip to Maine, he met you, and married you fast – five weeks later, and then brought you to North Carolina, where you lived for over 62 years.
We took lots of family trips to Maine, ate lobster rolls, puzzled over the inability to swim in a too cold ocean while the sand and air were gently warm. There was none of this infamous Southern humidity, and we slept in your childhood home, the windows open at night, beds piled with quilts as the temperatures dropped into the 50s. Recently, you were able to return on two solo trips, and I think Dad would have been so proud and amazed at your independence.
Mom on first solo trip to Maine, July/August 2016
You made a home here, adjusted to grits, collards and sweet
tea, but you never learned to love hushpuppies or tripe. You were a hard
worker, and very fastidious about things.
From you I learned how to properly clean a house, how to do “hospital
corners,” while making up a bed, as well as the totally useless chore – ironing
pillow cases. You taught me to cook, to bake (and dare I say apple pies because
of a certain someone listening to me now), how to do laundry, and yet another
useless chore – folding underwear.
It was because of you, I learned to love reading. You used
to let me play hooky, well, you actually thought I was sick, and I faked it
because you’d buy me books. I once held the thermometer up to the lamp after
you’d popped it in my mouth and stepped out of the bedroom. My temperature was
a blistering 104 and climbing. You gave me a look. You know the one. You were
my first reader when I began writing my own stories. You came to my book
events, always smiling, always so proud.
You were an entrepreneur. You owned a licensed daycare
center and ran it for more than twenty years. We can never know the total
number of children you took care of, but many of them now have children of
their own. Many of the parents, and even the now adult children have stayed in
touch with you. This is a testament to the love and care you gave them.
After the daycare closed, you took in blind people for the
state of NC. You cared for those individuals with the same dedication you did
the children. You did this for several years, and you still are in touch with some
of the families.
You loved working in your backyard. You would rake, trim
bushes, fluff pine straw, and do your best to eliminate every square inch of
those doggone gumballs. You hated when the wind blew and knocked more out of
the trees, after you’d just “cleaned”
the yard. I joked you would vacuum the grass if you could. Well, doggone if
Blaine didn’t go out and get you and Dad a “sweeper” that hooked up to the back
of the lawnmower. How were you supposed to be able to get your exercise raking
if Dad could sweep the yard in five minutes? I bet that gift actually made you
mad – Dad too. I think you provided him a lot of entertainment.
You loved going to the spa at Rex Hospital. You spent at
least three mornings a week there, swimming, and doing water aerobics. You had
friends everywhere, the grocery store, up and down Avent Ferry Road and in
states beyond. You loved sending cards and letters to all of your relatives and
friends, always writing a personal note expressing your feelings of love and
care.
You believed in angels. I counted how many you have at your
house in Dunn – twenty-nine. The part of me most like you insists there must be
one missing because it needs to be thirty. I bet you have thirty. Actually, I
think you have more because I believe I missed a room. You believed in Pennies
from Heaven. You have a small jar of them, and five of them you found and were
extra-special to you because they came after Dad passed.
You were a fierce Scrabble player. You loved beating the pants off me. You would laugh, and say “Thank you, Daddy!” insisting it was because of his heavenly help that you’d won.
Already plotting my loss.
You loved being around family. You dearly loved your grandchildren, Justin, Brooke, and Kyle, and your great grandchildren, Payton and Abigail.
Brooke, Mom and JustinMom and Abigail
When I was a single mother, it was because of you, I was able to make ends meet because you cared for Justin and Brooke in your daycare from the time they were only a few weeks old until they went to school. This allowed me peace of mind while I worked. When I met Blaine, you were so relieved and grateful I found someone who, in your words, “was so much like Dad” – particularly since my previous choices likely caused the both of you lot of raised eyebrows and worry. You often said Blaine was like your own child. The two of you liked to kid one another, always acting like you were giving each other a hard time, but there was a deep love there. He called you Grandma D, and Sweetie Petey, and loved to cook for you, especially after you got sick. You would always say, “Not too much!” when you came to eat at our house, insisting you ate “like a bird.” It was only years later, when you finally let us in on your little joke, when you finally admitted, “birds eat a lot!”
After Dad passed in March of 2015, you were lost. You had
met him when you were only 20, and he was 22. You had spent most of your lives
together, and now he was gone. I couldn’t imagine how you’d get by without him.
But you did. After two years of trying to keep up the house, and the yard, you
decided to sell and move closer to Blaine and me in Dunn. We were so happy and
relieved that you did. While you still missed “home,” you eventually told me
how safe you felt, and finally, how happy you were in your Ivy Glen community.
You loved your friends there, and spoke about how they welcomed you in, and
made you feel like you belonged. You also loved visiting Blaine’s family, and
told me time and again how much it meant to you, the way they embraced you, showering
you with love whenever we were all together.
In the end, your time here on earth was not easy. Your
diagnosis was horrific, turning your world, and ours, and everyone who knew
you, upside down. Life for you became much too difficult, much too complicated,
and truly painful. You withdrew from the things and those you loved. Your
favorite TV programs. Your phone calls to family and friends. Your walks in the
neighborhood. Your porch time. You were already leaving us then, but we didn’t
know it.
You were brave. You fought hard. You suffered. You endured. You said you felt like a burden and Mom, you never, ever were. I told you this, time and again, but I don’t know if you believed me. You worried about me, when you were the one dying. You were my mother, and a mother’s worry is never ending.
You stepped into the valley to begin your journey home.
Death trailed you as you descended into the darkest of its corners. I know you didn’t
want to go. I know you wanted to live. It’s why you went through the
treatments, filled with hope, and expectations. I remember you saying, “I’m
going to get through it, put it behind me, so I can live!”
You fought. You were always a fighter. You gave it your best. You were a true warrior through and through. You showed us your strength, and even in your moments of weakness, your courage pushed you out of those bleak and dreary corners into the light. You seemed to have waited until Allen and I could be with you. We’d been swapping time at the hospice, him at night, me during the day. On Sunday, August 18th, 14 days longer than you were given by the doctor there, you finally let Death come near, begin to embrace you, and in those final moments, you exhibited nothing but grace, dignity and bravery.
You have gone from us. You have finished your journey home. You
no longer walk this earth, you no longer belong to us in a physical sense. You
are exactly where you belong, at rest among your beloved Angels, with Dad, with
all those you loved who went before you. You are within the heavenly home that
is your just reward. You have earned peace, comfort and happiness.
I cannot express how much I loved you. How hard it will be not to spend any more time with you, to go on our little road trips, do what we called “cheating,” by eating junk food, the Monday’s I came to help, to play Scrabble, laugh with you, drink coffee with you, and to talk with you on the phone where I would say, “Hey, it’s me.” And you’d say, “Hey me!” I was blessed beyond measure, privileged to have had you as my mother.
There will always be a link between me, you, and all those
you loved, and who loved you. It extends beyond this earth, like the umbilical
cord that once attached me to you, it will always be there. That link is never
ending love. As we always said to one another, “I love you SO much,” and I know
you carried this with you as you left that dark valley and entered your
brilliant, heavenly home.
All my love, Mom,
Me.
Early days at the Hospice House, Smithfield, NC
Us“For Mom, a warrior – battle on”Lit in honor of her passing, SECU Hospice House, Smithfield, NC
I think I’ve said this before, and if I haven’t, I’ll say it now.
Cancer sure is sneaky.
Before I was diagnosed, I was sick for years and didn’t know it until a couple of persistent symptoms cropped up. One I ignored for some time because it mimicked another common health problem. One I didn’t because, OMG, LUMP! Right? What I thought was an enlarged “lymph node,” turned out to be a tumor, metastasized from the original. Because of that, I presented as a Stage IIIB right off the bat, and went on to the illustrious Stage IV.
Sneaky. Without a doubt.
February 19th was another day of reckoning.
That’s when my mother and I received the news of her own cancer diagnosis at age eighty-two.
It began simply enough. Some pain when swallowing that seemed to come out of nowhere in early January. She already had an appointment set up with her regular doctor for January 30th.
She said, “I’ll tell him about the pain then, if I even still have it. I probably just need my esophagus stretched. You know, so and so, and so and so have had theirs done.”
I thought, well, okay, maybe that’s it. I also thought her symptoms mimicked my husband’s. He has acid reflux, but, as long as he takes Nexium, he’s fine, otherwise swallowing dense food, like meat, potatoes bread, i.e., it’s the same as what she’d been having.
So, I bought her some of the over the counter stuff, and after a few days, she thought it might be working. Then, it wasn’t. By then, she wasn’t too far from her appointment, so she managed by finding things that were easier to eat. Finally, I took her to the doctor appointment, and she told him what was going on. Two days later, she was getting x-rays – which showed nothing. From there, he referred her to a gastroenterologist who ordered an endoscopy for February 19th.
The day of that procedure Mom was in good spirits, ready to get everything over with. It was all done pretty quick. The doctor walked into the recovery room while she was eating ice chips and I was dithering around on my phone.
He said, “Well, I know what’s wrong.”
I glanced up, and before I could ask him any questions, he said, “It’s a large mass growing into her esophagus. Cancer.”
Oh, how everything instantly changes when you hear that word. Every single thing about the way you think, the way you feel, the way you live from that moment on is altered. You know it, but none of it is solidified yet. The reality of it is still melding with you, and while you’re trying to cope with the word, physiologically your body reacts on its own. You were warm, and now you’re cold. You could breath and now you can’t. Your heart beats too quick, and tears fall, but neither of you notice any of these things.
Shocked, we could only listen to his next words carefully.
“We will wait on the biopsy, but I’ve seen plenty of these, and it doesn’t look good.”
What a sad ride home that was.
The next steps were to get a stent placed into her esophagus so she could eat. The gastro doctor was about to go out of the country for three weeks, so, on February 22nd, three days after the endoscopy, that was done. What followed was a rough, rough two weeks. The pain was intense as her body adjusted to this foreign tube stuck right into the middle of her esophagus and the tumor – which the doctor said looked pretty “angry.”
Somewhere between that, and the following weeks came a CT scan, a PET scan, meeting her oncologist, her mapping/planning with radiation oncology and the planning with her medical oncologist.
The surreal part of this? Her radiation oncologist is the same one I had, the same nurses – you remember these gals, right? I called them my angels back then and they haven’t lost those wings.
They’re still there, helping people fight.
Her battle begins tomorrow, April 4th at 10:00 o’clock a.m. when the ladies above will guide her through the treatments with expertise, care, and compassion, just like they did me. Directly after, she will walk across the hall to the medical oncology offices, where she will begin her chemotherapy at 10:45 .am.
She is receiving her chemo differently, and by that I mean once a week for six to seven weeks. I had the “pump”kin for a week at a time, twice. Remember it?
The “pump”kin. Ten days of hell, dosed out five days at a time.
She will have twenty-eight rounds of radiation.
Her attitude?
“I’m going to kick this thing of the way so I can keep going, so I can live! I’m going to fight like hell.”
Taken Monday at her house where she beat me twice in Scrabble.
DEAR CANCER 