We Are Losing Her, Too

 I had intrusive thoughts. I often do, but I had little breakthrough nudges that seemed so stupid.

I sat on my patio watching the garden and mulling over my mom's upcoming summer visit. She hoped to stop by for at least a week in July - maybe August. Her gallbladder was hurting: a lot. Aching *so* badly. It unsettled me: reminded me of my three month saga from hell. 

"Go get it checked out, Mom."

"They said the bloodwork is fine, but it just really hurts so that I can hardly breathe."

And so when I sat on my back patio watching the garden, any time I was alone - really alone, the intrusive thoughts started. What if... what if?

"Is this her year?" I asked God.

He knew what I was asking. 2017 was my dad's year. 

I chided myself for being overly worried. After all, I was likely projecting my own medical trauma worries onto her.

"Please go get scanned, Mom. Don't let your doctor off the hook." I pleaded.

"Yeah... but the blood tests..."

It didn't seem to matter how much I pushed. This went on for about three weeks. Finally, FINALLY, she found someone to listen to: her sister reminded her that their older sister had lethal cancers that began as unexplained pain in her side. Mom *finally* called the doctor. They couldn't get her in Monday, but they would Friday. 

Friday came and the kind NP at the doctor's office got her in for a scan straight away. But they didn't call her with the results: they called my sister. She called the rest of us. Pancreatic cancer, metastatic to a lesion on the liver and spots in her lungs. 

Oh, my gosh. *This* is why the pain left her breathless. Her lungs also had cancer. 

The bomb went off June 28th and the world has never been the same. 

Never, like we are so far in the future. 

It has been just about three weeks since 'the big day', and Mom has already been hospitalized for five days, has had a total of four CT scans (counting the original), one MRI, and one PET scan. 

This is all so surreal, so unfair. 

On the same token, I have friends who just lost their parents within the same set of months. I cringe with guilt, thinking that I cannot/shouldn't say that seven years is 'too close together'. Even so, both parents are dying in their 60's. That seems too young and this all feels too fast. 

I have such a vacillating sense of what I should and should not feel. I am trying to make space for all of it. 

I am rambling again. Losing parents does that to me. I ramble, or I am left speechless. 

Why did those nudges come to me in the garden? Why can I feel things ahead of time if I cannot change them?

"Is this her year?"

Yes. 

It is her year and now we are losing her, too.