rogue grove

so it’s been about a month since i left home and flew cross country to be with my mom since she wasn’t doing well. it’s been two since we found out she has stage four lung cancer. honestly, because of the way things have gone, we still don’t know just how bad it is. we haven’t been able to get her a brain scan because of her health.

i got here just in time because she didn’t realize she had pneumonia on top of the cancer and probably would have died days later. it’s been a comedy of errors, this process. not really. i imagine it goes like this for a lot of people and you just don’t really hear about it.

mom fell in a parking lot before she was meant to get a PET scan (where they see where in your body cancer may have spread to). they had given her a weird cast that meant she couldn’t pull her arms into the scanner and it was put off. for a month. when she’s got a very limited amount of time. she hasn’t been able to lay down for an mri of her brain to see if it has spread there because she can’t lie flat without coughing horribly.

the past few weeks are a blur. aside from the obvious scary things, i was shocked to find the way my mom was living. a way that said she hadn’t been okay for a long time. something i never would have heard over a phone call. or smelled, rather.

she lives not just on the other side of the country, but in the middle of nowhere. the nearest tiny towns are 20 miles in either direction and they’re so small that they have maybe one motel each. it’s a beautiful place and it’s during their tourism season so there’s even less space than there could have been. i’m used to being between 5 wawas in a 5 mile radius. and nobody has even heard of a wawa out here.

i had to face all my fears to be here. and reface them every day. (i hate flying and that’s the only thing i’ve had to deal with once. so far) i’ve driven further in the last month than i have in years. after a stint of agoraphobia, i’ve been out of the house and driving every. single. day. i’ve driven more in one day here than i have in over a month at home.

i’m doing so much that it’s hard to be sad about my mom. never mind that she and i piss each other off, there’s just too much to take care of. she went downhill quickly and i have to take care of her 5 cats, giant dog, the weird guy she lets live in her shed, and now her. as well as not burn out like i always do. or aggravate my spinal injury. or have a panic attack.

it sneaks in on the long drives. in the quiet parts before i fall asleep. but there’s so many loose ends i barely have time to focus on these words before thinking about all the things there are still to do. not even the fun stuff. just the responsibility thrust upon me, alone out here with no one but equally shaky footed people to help. i don’t have the support system the way i had it at home. some of it is impossible to access, other parts have just changed.