The memory of the worst day of my life drifted over me recently. It happens sometimes, when I’m tired or driving home or my mind is quiet. I used to punch it back from my consciousness at the first stirrings of memory. I am getting better at letting it come, at least when it’s not dangerous (no crying while driving), but I suspect it will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Oddly, it has nothing to do with me. I can take the meningitis, and the diabetes with complications, the kidney disease, cataracts, asthma and all the rest, but I will never come to terms with this one day in the eleven months my mom lived with pancreatic cancer.
My mom had a wonderful relationship with her brother. They were only two years apart, and they fought like crazy people when they were young. Things like he cut off half of her hair while she slept and she had to go to kindergarten the rest of the year in hats and scarves. I am actually not sure what she did to him. I only ever heard the one side of things, and it seemed disloyal to ask my uncle. I’m sure there was something. But she always said that the more you fought as kids, the closer you ended up, which explains me and my brother.
My uncle pretty much left home, and the United States, when he turned 17 or 18, first for college in Canada, and then on to Europe. He would never come back except on vacation. Nevertheless, they remained so close that one would think about calling the other, and that night that one would call the first one. Kind of like long distance ESP.
When she got sick, it was less than a year before she went into hospice. They were kind, and set up a cot for me in her room. Every day, I sat with her, talked with her, did what I could to reassure her, and when she finally left us, I told her it was ok to go. This wasn’t that day.
No, the worst day of my life was the day my uncle had to leave. He’d come, of course, as soon as he could after we told him that the end of her life was near. The problem was that the hospice stage has no timeline and my uncle was still working. He stayed as long as he could, but the day came that he had to go back. I will never forget watching him from the doorway of her room as he bent down for the last few words he would have with his little sister. I suspect it was one of the hardest days of his life, too. It was also my birthday. I was 24.
She died nine days later. She waited for her best friend before she left, the last goodbye that meant something to her.
I’m not even sure why I am telling you this. Maybe . . . maybe because these are the things that shape all of us, for better or worse. I will never be able to celebrate my birthday with a big party. Maybe because every single one of us has a story like this one, one that we hide away in the dark, but that has shaped us in ways, some of which we have yet to understand.
I really hope your relationship with your story is better than mine is with my story.