So Mom moved into the first-floor guest room. It was directly across from the bathroom, which mattered because chemotherapy made stairs and long walks difficult. The room also had a window overlooking our backyard garden, which Mom loved.
She arrived with one suitcase and a bag of medicine and apologized for both.
“Mom, bring whatever you need. This is your room.”
She looked around carefully.
“It’s nice.”
“It’s close to the bathroom.”
“That was thoughtful.”
“For the chemo.”
She nodded and, for once, simply said, “Thank you.”
Her first treatment lasted five hours. I sat beside her the entire time. When the nausea began, she squeezed my hand and apologized.
“Stop saying sorry,” I told her.
“I don’t know how.”
That answer hurt more than I expected.
The hardest part of those first treatments was the helplessness. I could bring tea, straighten a blanket, talk to nurses, keep track of medications, and hold her hand when the nausea came. I could not remove the cancer from her body. During the final hours of one infusion, she slept while I watched the medication drip through the line and thought about how much of her life I had never witnessed because she had always preferred to carry difficult things privately. Now she had no choice but to let me witness this. I decided that if being present was the only useful thing I could do, then I would be fully present.
