Motherdaughter

For the most part, I have had two roles in my life.....Daughter and Mother.  The first one, Daughter, I have had for 41 years now.  I have always been one.  I am quite accustomed to it.  Now, the second one, Mother, I have had the unbelievable pleasure of having for almost 15 years.  I must add that this role is my favorite.  In fact, this role quite possibly sums up my entire identity.  Now, the vast majority of the time that I have split myself between these two characters, Mother and Daughter, they were very separate, distinct roles.  I do alright flipping between the two...they are a little like two sides of the same coin.  I know Mother and Daughter both pretty well......they both have their place.

My struggle with them begins March 23, 2011.  My Daddy has been sick with abdominal pains for about two days and my mother has rushed to Austin for the birth of my niece, Chloe, who is being delivered by a pre-mature C-Section.  I am, as ususal, stuck at my office.  My poor mom stays just long enough to see Chloe make her debut, email me the picture and get the new family settled in their room before rushing back to San Antonio to take my dad to the ER, as the pain is now unbearable.  They are there no longer than three hours when my mother calls to deliver the unthinkable.  The doctors have done a CT scan and found that my father has cancer in his liver, lung, pancreas and bile duct.  Without so much as even consulting an Oncologist, they are able to conclude that he has Stage 4 cancer, and they make no effort to soften the blow of it's terminal nature.  There aren't even words to describe how this news made me feel.  From this moment on, for the following three days, I completely fell apart.  I am not a cryer, but I sobbed almost uncontrollably for hours on end.  It was impossible to stop.  This news completely overwhelmed me to the point that I could barely reason for this short period of time.  I began running pictures through my head of Kaley's graduation without her Papa, Christmases without our Santa; I could think of nothing but every line on my Daddy's face, every little thing that I loved so much about him.  I had chest pains and indescribable anxiety.  I became immersed in my Daughter-ness.  For about three days, I merely went through the motions of my Mother role.  To be completely honest, it is the only time in almost fifteen years that I really didn't give two seconds of thought to being Mother.  Three days of (in Kaley lingo) "epic failure".

It was three days later, when after having already broke the news to Kaley on day one, that she broke down in our garage.  Something completely unrelated sent her into a meltdown over the reality of losing her precious Papa.  It was then that the switch flipped for me.  I immediately became Mother........and ignored Daughter...it's all I could do.  I re-immersed myself in softball practice, sleep-overs and all things ruled over in Mother-dom.  I even baked (which leads me to believe that I was truly experiencing some type of multiple personality disorder).  I reigned, once again, as Mother for some time....until she started creeping back in; Daughter that is.  By the morning of my sweet Daddy's 64th birthday, July 14th, she had made herself Ruler of Her Dominion and pushed Mother back down into the trenches.  One of the reasons I prefer Mother over Daughter is because Daughter brings neediness, denial and quite frankly, a little bit of hysteria to the table.  Mother is much more stable.  Anyways, Daughter was back today and she was hellbent on doing away with Mother for good.

According to Murphy's Law, my Dad would, of course, be hospitalized on his birthday.  He had been refusing to eat, take his meds and communicate all week and it had caught up to him the night before.  As I said, I was once again hysterically Daughter this morning, so I drove straight to San Antonio to sit with him at the hospital, as I just needed my Daddy.  I walked in his room and, to my surprise, he was just my Dad.....he was teasing the nurses, complaining about the food and trying to give me gas money.  Gone was the man that had been withering away just days before.  We sat and talked about life and death and life after death.  We talked about my own fears of death and my precious father reminded me that it would all be alright and promised me that there is nothing to be afraid of.  That's what Dads do.  And it was here that I was reminded of all the things that I loved about Daughter.  Indeed, it was also here that Mother and Daughter merged and became one.

Here's the reality:  my father's physical body is withering away; he is very ill.  He is dying.  I am having to come to terms with this as both a Daughter and a Mother.  I have no choice.  But, I will do it and I'll do it well because my father promised me..."life is full of storms right now, but there are calm waters ahead and there is nothing to fear".  My Father promises me the same thing.