Nighttime is a time for my mind to wander and scare me, as the lack of visibility propagates my emotional imagination. That being said, I’m still up right now because I can’t stop thinking about my visit to my parents’ Sunday night.
I’d gone alone, as Mr. W stayed to fix an issue with his son’s computer. After admiring the Alexandrite ring they’d bought me in Hawaii (which they still insist is a gift and I still insist is a loan), my mom said, “Cindy, I have bad news for you.” While we were in Hawaii having the time of our lives, my mom received the diagnosis from her doctor that she has liver cirrhosis. Her eyes reddening, she watched me carefully for my reaction. I didn’t react. To her, it’s a death sentence as her father passed away from that. But that was over three decades ago in a small inadvanced island, and he was a heavy drinker and a smoker, while my mother does not have either risk factor and is in a country with better medical facilities. To me, it is an early diagnosis so I do not see this as terminal news. To her, cirrhosis is watching her father cough up blood and waste away painfully within 6 months in a hospital bed. To me, cirrhosis is a disease that modern medical science knows how to stop, even though the present damage to her liver may not be reversable. To me, she has luckily been doing everything right in her attempt to help my father’s hypertension — dropping sodium intake, reduction of pain-reliever pill-popping, nightly walking around the hilly neighborhood with my dad, virtually zero alcohol consumption. But to her, she is frustrated that she’s been doing everything right and she still received this diagnosis. To me, the diagnosis identifies the problem for us so that we can immediately work on the solution. She’d taken the last week off to recover emotionally from the news, and had called her mother, who cried with her on the phone. She will not see tears from me, because I will show her nothing but faith that we are now on the right track to fix this, and that this is not the end. I think she felt a little better after we talked about my views on this.
Despite her red eyes clearing up, she nonetheless led me upstairs and showed me where she kept all the bank account books, legal paperwork, important documents. She’d spent the week taking photos of all the valuables she had in the house, then putting those photos in an album with price tag labels so that if I should decide upon their death to sell the items, I would know their approximate monetary value. She said half sheepishly that my father had called her crazy for going this far, saying this kind of preparation is unnecessary and that she was being ridiculous. I told her that it’s okay, despite the fact that I’m sure it’s unnecessary, I understood that sometimes having your affairs squared away just makes you feel better and rest more comfortably, because that’s still another important and big thing done.
After getting back, I emailed her to tell her that I was thinking on the drive home that maybe she’d expected me to react more strongly, to cry, to panic, and explained that my lack of panic does not mean I do not care, but that I don’t feel we are at a stage for panic. I reiterated how I feel she’d unknowingly and luckily given herself the best chance by her current clean lifestyle, and we’ll figure this out very soon. She wrote back that she knows I do care, but that the clean living is apparently not enough, so what more could she possibly do or change? She’s feeling helpless. I’m trying not to let myself feel helpless. I need to research how to get her white blood cell count up, her immune system up, and her platelets up. She’d always had low blood pressure, and while there, she had some major sciatica pain when she got out of her seat that prevented her from being able to move, and my dad had to help her back into her chair as her face crumpled and her shoulders shook from the pain and effort. A heating pad helped relieve most of the pain, and I told her she should stretch her hamstrings and leg muscles when she’s not in pain and after their nightly walks when her legs are warmed up, showed her a few ways to do it, explained that her sitting for long periods of time and her sleeping on her side in fetal position plus her poor circulation leads her leg and hip muscles to tighten up, pulling on the sciatic nerve. But secretly I’m thinking that maybe she is already dealing with edema in her legs due to the liver not performing at its peak right now.
Tonight I’m thinking of how my mother does all the cooking and cleaning and bills and, well, everything. How helpless my father would be without her. I remember my mother going back to Taiwan to visit her mother when I was in the third grade, and my dad and I had instant ramen for two weeks. Occasionally in those 2 weeks my aunt would bring by some homemade food, but my dad basically did not cook. I’m thinking about how my mother makes all my dad’s medical appointments, keeps his pills straight, manages the things he should and shouldn’t eat, like taking away the soy sauce and MSG, and bringing him plates of chopped fruit. I’m thinking of all the things I haven’t learned from her, like her amazing red-roasted beef stew noodle soup, her won tons made from scratch, how she felt when she first met my dad. I’m thinking of all the things I haven’t given her, like more affection, a wedding date, a grandchild.
And now I’m crying.