"Your life-expectation is twelve months," the doctor said. My eyes flicked very quickly towards him and I wondered momentarily what it must be like to utter those words to someone sitting right in front of you; How it must feel.
She sat there, very still; Eyes once clear and blue now slate-grey - Still alive with life, but...Duller. And then I saw them glaze over, fill with tears, which spilled over and onto her face. I didn't know what to say, had had no experience with this scenario before and didn't know if words were appropriate anyway.
She didn't look at me at first, just sat there rock-still, but eventually her head turned my way. Her eyes were full of tears and she looked beaten I guess is the only word I could use. Her head tilted slightly to the left as she held my gaze as if to say, this is it.
That was my mum and we sat in her doctors office.
She had asked me to come with her to the appointment and despite really not wanting to I agreed. I had flown 4500km to be with her throughout a testing and evaluation phase and that appointment was the culmination of those tests - The appointment in which she would learn her fate.
Almost twelve months to the day she passed away. The breast cancer she had battled for almost eight years had progressed to secondary-bone cancer and eventually took her life. She was in a lot of pain towards the end. A lot of pain. She had unrestricted access to morphine though so as that ramped up the pain lessened. She stopped eating, and finally succumbed.
I'm not sure why, but my memory seems to have blocked out how I felt that day in her doctors office when I heard him say she had a twelve-month life-expectancy. I'm not sure if I believed it at the time - My mum dead? Naw, not going to happen. But it did.
My mum was a battler. She went after what she wanted, drove at it with a relentlessness that belied her small stature. She overcame tremendous adversity as a youth, raised two young girls (not her own) left with her by their father when she was only seventeen years old, married my father and dealt with the challenges of a mixed-race marriage in a small country town before Australia was as multicultural as it is now. src
She raised five children the best way she knew how, making mistakes and having great success along the way. She clawed her way forward, turned adversity into triumph and dealt with failure with the same tenacious manner in which she pursued success. She made not much go further and instilled an ethos in her children that endures. But she couldn't fight cancer any longer and left us to make our own way forward.
She deserved a better end - We all do, I assure you.
I was reminded of this appointment my mum and I went to today after a phone call my wife made to me. It seems she's been asked to attend a similar appointment at a doctor's office and the expectation is that the news will not be positive.
A client of hers has no family around her, as her husband deceased a few years ago, and so she has asked Faith to attend the appointment with her. It may seem odd for a client to ask such a thing however Faith has known this lady for 34 years and has seen her almost every week of the year for that time. Faith agreed to go but it will be difficult for her.
Faith almost lost her own mum to cancer this year, and she's not completely out of the woods yet. She also lost her dad to cancer when he was 33 (she was 11) and that ended in a tragic manner which has affected Faith profoundly so...Yeah, I guess I'm worried about her.
Selfishly though, I couldn't help but think to myself better her than me at that appointment as going through it once is enough for anyone...
...We don't know if and when each of us will be in a similar appointment as either the subject or support-person and therefore we don't know how we would act or react. Trust me, you think you're prepared...But you never really are.
"Your life-expectation is twelve months," is not something any of us ever wants to hear about ourselves or those we value however it is a reality of life that we may do so. We are simply flesh and bone after all, susceptible to death; It's an inevitable reality of life and we don't really know how long we each have.
I'm not sure how my wife will handle that appointment next week; I hope it doesn't affect her too much although I know it will. She's a strong person but even the strongest of people can bend or break under the weight of too much emotional stress. I'm sure I won't know what to say if, and when, she breaks under the pressure...Maybe just being there will be sufficient as it was that day my mum and I met her doctor. or maybe not.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
