mercy…

My mother-in-law and I have a complicated relationship. I watch enough stand-up comedy clips and have heard enough humorous quips from friends to know we’re not the exception to the rule. There’s a special relationship between a mother and a son – apparently one that involves disapproving of any woman he dates. Especially the one he marries.

It certainly doesn’t help that I am the only member of her entire family of a different race.

I don’t dislike my mother-in-law. We’re cordial, even friendly to each other. Although, she once told me that my problem (meaning POTS) is that I need to eat more protein, and I need to figure out a way to get better because my husband wants to do things, and he doesn’t want to be married to someone who can’t do things, so he’ll find a wife who can. And she told me this after she moved into my house because my husband and I agreed to care for his parents as they grew older. And likes to tell me occasionally that my husband would rather be single (although I don’t actually believe that).

So….we’re not best friends.

If you’ve read the past few posts, you know my MIL has cancer. My husband and father-in-law are great at taking care of her. But they’re men. And men, I mean this with the utmost respect and appreciation, because I LOVE you all – from your handiness to your strength to your hairy everything to your cute little asses, I love it all. But, how shall I say this…some of you leave something to be desired in the verbalizing empathy department. When a woman starts crying, some of you immediately look for the quickest way to the “off” switch. My husband and father-in-law focused on constructing a plan going forward and reminding her of all the good things in her life when she would cry about dying.

And those are good strategies. But they were looking for the “off” switch. 

I have a personal philosophy, one that may seem rather harsh, but has served me well. When something bad happens, you get so long to complain about it and then you either have to: 1) do something about it, or 2) shut up about it. How long you’re allowed to complain is directly related to the event itself. So, if you stub your toe, maybe you get 5 minutes to complain, then go put some ice on it or stop complaining. If you don’t like your job, maybe you get a few months, then either start looking for a new job, or stop complaining. But friends, if the bad thing that happened to you is that you found out you have only a few weeks left to live, you’re allowed to complain for the rest of your life.

So one day when my husband and father-in-law were out running errands, I sat with her and we cried. I let her grieve, I asked her how she was feeling emotionally, and I let her know it was okay to be heartbroken. We also sat in silence so she wasn’t alone.

That was only a couple weeks ago. Her physical health has seriously deteriorated since then. She’s now essentially in a coma, with short bursts of being awake. Her cancer releases liver enzymes into her body, which make her incredibly itchy. We have reached a familiar routine where we give her a lot of morphine, she’s knocked out for hours on end, wakes up groaning in pain and trying to vomit, we give her more morphine to ease the pain, and repeat the cycle. Until last night, I hadn’t seen her since our talk two weeks ago.

Movies always make it seem like someone gives their loved one’s hand a squeeze, leans back and closes their eyes, falls asleep and never wakes up. No one tells you about the crying and groaning and urine and vomit and incoherent mumbling.

 I don’t know if this makes me an awful person, but I’m going to be honest with you because someday someone is going to read this and feel comforted knowing they are not the only one that feels this way. Until last night, all I could think about was how much I hate this. I’m tired, friends. So tired. I realized today that I haven’t taken POTS medication in three days because I haven’t had time and it’s the last thing on my mind. I worried about how her dying in my house would affect my property value, which I’m ashamed to admit, but I thought about it nonetheless. I worried about how my health is going to be affected by all this. My husband is on FMLA so right now I’m the only one working and I, and probably most people with POTS, should never be the primary breadwinner. But I go to work, then I come home and prepare dinner for all of us and do laundry and take care of the dog and run errands and wash dishes and, for the love of god, why are there always so many fricken dishes?? Eventually I nearly pass out from the exhaustion and wake up and do it all over again.

I hope she dies soon. I know that’s horrible to say out loud. And yes, part of it is because I don’t want her and her family to suffer anymore, but selfishly, part of it is that I don’t want to do this anymore either. I don’t want to have to get ready for work while someone cries in pain in the next room. I don’t want to dread going home because I know I won’t have ten minutes to just sit and relax. I ran to the grocery store twice yesterday, and both times, I thought about not going back home. Just driving up the coast. I didn’t sign up for this bullshit, and I hate that it has taken over my life. Especially for a woman who thinks her son would have been better off without me.

Excuse my language friends, but this is fucking hard.

But then last night, I helped my husband and father-in-law take care of her when she woke up for a few minutes. She can’t really open her eyes and isn’t aware of what’s happening. She can’t lift her hands above her head, so I cut off her t-shirt with scissors, washed her body, rubbed cream on her wounds, and dressed her. Friends, she has the worst rash I have ever seen in my life. The skin is completely raw and peeled away in certain areas. It looks like radiation burns. It’s horrible – it makes me physically sick to think of anyone in that much pain. Because she can’t sit up, my husband and father-in-law had to hold her up while I rubbed on the cream. At one point, she mumbled something near my ear that sounded like “thank you” in English. English isn’t my mother-in-law’s first language, nor is she fluent, and she always talks to her husband, and usually mine too, in her native tongue. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe she didn’t say thank you. Maybe I’m romanticizing something that didn’t happen. Maybe she mumbled something in Japanese that sounds like “thank you”. Hell, maybe she mumbled “fuck you”, I don’t know.

But seeing her wounds and hearing her in pain and feeling her gratitude reminded me of the greatest gift we can ever give each other: mercy. And our frustration and what we signed up for, and certainly our property values, don’t matter one. single. ounce.

There’s a point to this rambling, and the point is this: there’s a human aspect to each illness. We get lost in the data and the symptoms and the disruptions they cause in our lives. Whether it’s cancer or POTS or the flu, there’s a person suffering. And they don’t need our judgment or our baseless assumptions or our exasperation.

They need our mercy.

“Attention is the first and final act of love, and that the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.” – Steve Almond

Smell ya later.
– Linds