A step in the process of healing...talking about it..

A step in the process of healing...talking about it..

It's past midnight and I just can't sleep. Flashes of my mother's last days on earth are as vivid as if they happened yesterday. When mum was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of May, I was shocked...so was everybody else in the family. She has not shown any signs of pain or discomfort except for the usual complains of pain in her knee joints. We all thought this was the normal progression of woman her age. After all, she wasn't getting any younger and this would have been her eightieth year on earth.

So we were all very concerned when her knee joint pains became very severe suddenly; it was so bad that she could no longer walk and most of the time, her conversation became jumbled and sometimes even senseless. I remember quite vividly the last time I had a decent conversation with her before she slowly regressed behind a shell we couldn't reach. It was Mother's Day and I kissed her on the cheek before giving her a card with an angpow inside. She smiled at me and we said our usual hi and bye before I left the house. I didn't see her for a few days and all of a sudden, I found out that dad was dragging her around the house on an old rattan chair, helping her to bathe and change her, all without our knowledge. The strength of dad's love for mum was clearing demonstrated through those days. Mum was not a small built woman. And dad is already approaching his eightieth this year.

I only knew something was seriously wrong when I helped her to change her clothes in the morning. The lesions on the chest wall where her left breast should have been stared back at me. I tried to hide the shock. My first thoughts were instantly on the big C. When did she have surgery without us knowing? What was happening? She seemed unaware of what was happening and didn't show any emotion when I was changing her. I quickly asked my father who told me with such sadness in his eyes that he too didn't know, not until now, when he had begun taking care of her. The days that followed became a blur.

My sisters and I immediately bought her a wheelchair and took her to UMMC for treatment. We were still thinking it was very bad case of osteoarthritis. We just didn't want to think of the worst. In all the running around, we didn't mention the lesions to the attending doctor. He just checked her legs and sent her home. It was the usual sickness of the old, he said and there was nothing he could do except prescribed some painkillers and asked that she be brought back for a checkup a week later. The hospital will not give a bed to someone unless it's absolutely life threatening and knee joint pains, no matter how severe, is NOT life threatening. In that one week, we saw such rapid deterioration, it was frightening. Initially, she could still mumble a few words and she was still able to tell us if she was thirsty or if she didn't want to eat. But within the next few days, she refused to eat and on some days could only manage to take in a spoonful of porridge or cereal. She was in a daze most of the time and sometimes would sleep for hours on end without waking up. But the most disturbing thing was her incessant call for help to lie down and within 30 seconds to be propped up again. It was a continuous cycle to ease whatever pain and discomfort she was feeling. We (my dad and sisters) took turns to take care of her but it all seemed so futile and heart breaking to hear her crying in pain at every movement. The painkillers didn't seem to be effective. We didn't know how else to help her.

The second visit to the hospital initially didn't yield any results. The blood and urine test came back with results that apparently didn't alarm the doctor. It was only when I showed him the lesions on my mother's chest that prodded him to do a more thorough physical check and the diagnosis was what we had feared most. She was already at the end stage of cancer that had probably been ravaging her body for the last two years. What followed will be a nightmare I will always remember. She was immediately admitted to the hospital but the doctor told us from the very onset that the battle is already lost. They, the hospital would provide palliative care to make her suffering more bearable. They could only give her painkillers and analgesics to help her get through the day and sleeping pills for the long nights. At first, she could still recognize us, her husband, us, her children and her grandchildren. She could still ask for water and cry out for us to prop her up and lay her down. But as the morphine dosages became higher, she began to lose sense of all that was around her. Perhaps she too knew that the end was near. There was this one day when she kept asking me to switch on the lights because it was so dark in the room. But it was broad daylight outside and the bright fluorescent lights were on. And she seemed to be speaking to people we couldn't see. It was frightening and yet, we know that we were not going to have much time with her.

Just before she was discharged to be sent home to die (that was how the doctors put it), she was put on tube feeding. She could no longer swallow and we were taught how to administer her three hourly liquid feedings. I cried many times, just holding her hand and watching her; my mother no longer able to enjoy all the foods that she loved, lying in bed, unable to help herself. I caressed her hands, swollen from the medication given and watched my mother slowly fading away. I could only pray for her and with her. In the moments she was not sleeping, she would whimper from the pain that have filled her bones. Her eyes would look at me yet they seemed unseeing. I would lean close and whispered often into her ears that God loves her and will help ease her suffering. There was no need to fear.

We brought her home two weeks later and engaged a private nurse to take care of her. Every two days, a lovely nurse from Hospis Malaysia came to see her and helped to clean the bedsore that had eaten into my mum's lower back. Lilien was very gentle with mum. She is Taiwanese and when she spoke to mum in Mandarin, it was as if she was giving mum the dignity she has lost in the hands of the student nurses and medical students at the hospital. Despite her condition, she was still a human being and deserved respect as such. Mum could no longer talk. She would occasionally open her eyes and stared into space. Sometimes a flicker of recognition would light up when we called her and held her hand. We continued to talk to her, hoping she could still understand, if not feel the love surrounding her in her last days with us.

Exactly two weeks later on June 27, mum passed away. Only my elder sister was with her. There were no last words, no goodbyes. That morning, I fed her for the last time and before I left the house to run some errands, I kissed her on her forehead and told her that I loved her. I would never be able to kiss her again.

Now all I have are memories, photos and a short phone voice recording of mum when she was still in hospital. It was not a conversation, just her voice, mumbling away in pain but it is to me, the only physical memory I have of her. Mum was no angel when she was alive. She ruled the household with an iron hand, her word was law and in the last few years, she became increasingly demanding of our attention and monetary gifts. We didn't understand her then but now we do. She was insecure and knowing that death will someday claim her in this horrendous way had driven her to hang on to us as much as she could. But beneath that, I will remember a mother who is both loving and caring, demonstrated in her own quiet ways, the doting grandmother to all of five grandchildren and the amazing woman who hid all her pains from us during the time when she needed us most. She must have gritted her teeth to hide her pain when we were not looking, so as not to worry us. And I believe the painkillers she has been faithfully taking to ease the pain of her knee joints have somehow helped to dull the real underlying pain of the cancer. We kept asking ourselves, "Why did she hide from us?" Was it ignorance?
I think it was love. She didn't want us to worry. She must have thought that after all, death is imminent and worry will not keep it at bay.

Her suffering was relatively short compared to many other cancer patients. She died within five weeks of diagnosis. But sadly, the short time also did not give her a chance to impart her last wishes nor us to say our proper goodbyes. A friend who lost her mother a few years ago told me that time will heal all pain. But it will come and when it does, all that is left will be good memories of mum, a legacy to be passed on to the generations to come. And I think mum will be smiling from above.