I don't know what to call this post

So.... my beloved cat, Topsy, died on the First of the month.  I'd had him/He'd had me since some time about 1999 or so.  He was an outdoor cat, semi-feral, very friendly and sweet, though clearly with a past of having been abused by someone.  Something happened to him neurologically--his body was still healthy--and he deteriorated rapidly to the point where I had to make the decision to end his suffering and have him euthanized.

As if that didn't suck enough.

Today (yesterday now... it's after midnight) the results from my Mom's latest PET scan came in.  Today-today is exactly six months since I first posted about her cancer, and almost five months since musing in grief that she could be gone in six...

Now, it's everywhere.  God in Heaven, it's everywhere.  It's everywhere inside her.  There's too many spots.  It's in her bones, in her muscles, her organs... and even a tiny spot between the hemispheres of her brain.  There's nothing more that can be done except to make sure she's comfortable and take as much advantage of the time we have while we can.

She has hardly gotten out of bed since Sunday morning and she has a horrible time concentrating or remembering... or communicating.  She'll start to say something and stop after a few words, and just go silent.  Half the time she forgets that she spoke at all.  When something's really on her mind, she repeats and reaffirms it over and over again.  "I'm okay."  "I love you."  "He [my Dad] needs to be strong."  It's very similar to the way my Grandma (Dad's Mom) is now with her dementia.  She has been in a care home for a year and a half now.  Mom won't have that long.

The last "big" things she did on Saturday before this began was having a Five Guys burger for dinner after the PET scan (having such an appetite has been a big deal, lately) and standing by to support me as I buried Topsy in the yard.  Her oncologist says she likely has months (rather than weeks and rather than years) and there's talk about bringing in Hospice soon.  Hospice has been mentioned for my Grandpa as well, who's living with congestive heart failure and has been in and out of hospitals and care facilities since Christmas.

We probably won't make it over to my sister's for blessing my baby niece, so they may come here instead.  If it can happen in our home ward and Mom feels up to go to Sacrament meeting, wonderful!  If she doesn't, we will do it here at home.

I'm sure there's many philosophical and spiritual things to be said here about life and death, change, transition, and the eternal nature of the soul.  There is.  I just can't say it right now.  I can't.  I'm numb with spurts of anguish.  I'm adjusting to the loss of my cat okay.  I hope I can do comparably well for the coming loss of my Mother and Grandfather.  I hope I can find or be given strength to let my Dad be weak when he needs to be weak.

Oh God, what am I going to do....

I need my Mother

Fairly early on in my Daughters of Mormonism episode about the Mother Fast, as part of recounting my history with the Church and my life in it, I mentioned that I was adopted at birth.  Sybil then asked if I thought part of my reasoning behind starting the Fast was because I was adopted and whether I felt like I was reaching out for that lost connection.  At the time I answered no, and I still think that answer is true (though who knows what motivations are triggered in the subconscious?  That's why it's subconscious.)  I feel far more affected by my adoption than my sister does--she forgot to even mention it to her husband until their first tithing settlement and he noticed the sealing date on her record--and while I often think about my birth mother, I truly am happy in the life and family that I have and I can't imagine a better one.  It might be a tiny contributing factor, but maybe.... there's a more obvious one.

I alluded before (is it allusion when it's pretty much straight up?) to the fact that my mother has cancer: melanoma to be precise.  And it sucks.  We've been dealing with this in some way, shape, or form for almost two years now and it's just... not getting better.  The treatments she just finished may still take another month or two to really start showing results; meanwhile her most recent scan indicated significant tumor growth since the scan that told us the cancer was back.  They're talking about radiating one of the tumors, but even then there's two more, one of which is in her lung and she has already done all of the chest radiation her body can take.  Ever.  It's no longer an option.  Neither is surgery.  Chemo isn't very effective for melanoma.  She wants to live past the time when my niece is born enough so that no one ever thinks, "It's her birthday, and this is the time we we lost her Grandma."  My niece is "due" in early-mid January.  In theory, my Mom could be gone in six months.  I wasn't thinking it could be that soon.

I need my mother.  I need my Mother.  I conceived the Fast not long after Mom and Dad told us about the cancer's return.  Maybe part of my motivation for this search for Heavenly Mother is because I can't stand the thought of losing my Mom.  We already lost her Mom when I was seven.  I lost a woman I saw as something of a second Mom in my teens.  I've never known my birth mother.

One of my best friends lost her Mom when she was a young child, only three or four years old.  I can't even imagine that kind of loss.  I can't.  Even when my Mom passes on, at least I'll be an adult.  Still, I don't know what I'll do.  I feel badly because people lose their mothers every day.  People go through this grief all the time.  I don't want to be one of them, but I will be and I don't know how I'm going to endure it.

I had planned to start saving to move into town right before we found out.  Now the idea makes me sick to my stomach.  I don't want to go away, but I need to.  My adultness needs to, and I know she understands that; but my childness needs all the time it can get with her.  And if I fail to move until after she's gone?  I'll leave my Dad alone in an empty house that he just might feel the need to sell at that point, and with it would go over two decades of memories.

My thoughts have just come to a screeching, messy stop with stuff tumbling over itself out of order and scattering across the floor.  I guess it's time to stop.  I just really... I need my Mother.  I need my Mother.

Cancer sucks.  Patriarchy sucks.  I need my Mothers.

Free gift, yay! (Updated)

So, I finally had the opportunity to get together with Heather for more than five minutes (we'd only met once before today) and she was kind enough to bring me a copy of Mother Wove the Morning. I've been meaning to get this book for ages.

I know what I'm doing tomorrow! Woo hoo!

UPDATE:
Wow, that book is so much shorter than I thought it would be for some reason.  Granted, it's the content of a 90 minute play, but for some reason I was expecting it to be longer and I read it within about an hour.

It left me wanting so much more, in a very good way.  I wanted it to go on I wanted to hear more stories, more women's voices.  Some of the stories given are heartbreaking, some make you smile.  All of them are beautiful.  They illustrate--sometimes just too well--how much we have lost our Mother, and how much we need her and what Her absence has done to us.

Dryad is sending me the DVD soon (which I'll have to send on back to its original owner!) which is very exciting.  I can't wait to see it.  So yes, I highly recommend this book!

Bobbie - my eulogy

He was the big man next door when I was a little girl, a giant in my eyes who towered over my entire family, and who had to duck whenever he entered our home with his gentle strength.  His hands were so huge that when I was tiny, I could have almost worn his wedding ring for a bracelet.  That was before I knew him, but not my family.

We weren't always next door to the Smiths.  In fact, compared to the time we've known them now, those years when we could walk thirty or so steps to each other's doors were relatively few.  But they have always been and will always be our neighbors.  The ancient white house, now on the other side of a fence and owned by two people since they moved, will always be theirs.

Bobbie was exactly whom you would want your neighbor to be.  An open smile, a firm handshake that could swallow your own, and a perfect willingness to help: these were his trademarks.  He loved to laugh, and when he did, even his chuckle would fill the room with the deep sounds of his voice.  No opportunity for a pun was passed over, and as I learned what they were, we would trade them back and forth like cards.

He could speak to children, he understood them, and he loved them.  I never had the opportunity to be his student in school or to have him as my coach, but no one I have ever met that was in his class or on his team has ever said he was anything but the best they ever had.  I would have traded a few I had for him in a heartbeat.

He loved to bake, especially his eponymous Bobbie Bread, delicious and brown and warm and unbeatable fresh from the oven.  He loved to work, especially out side and with his hands.  Whether it was gardening or mowing the back yard, cutting up the mint over the leach field.  You could smell for days when Bobbie had mowed the yard.  He gave service more willingly than almost anyone, and he gave love.  He stood by what he believed without fail, and always with love.

I speak in the past tense because these are my memories, but Bobbie lives on.  He has finally gone home, having enduring his trials, and I know after giving his all.  The world has lost one of its greatest men, the kind you're lucky to know one of in a lifetime.  I was blessed to know Bobbie Smith as the big man next door.