Late June, 2000 – It’s been a whirlwind of a week – to say the least – we have had more relatives and friends crammed in my mom’s hospital room in the last seven days than we’ve seen in one place well, ever. Mom was a very special woman, well connected in the community and always surrounded by people. Now, suddenly, she was alone as I entered the room. Her surgery was successfully completed yesterday and although she has lived through open brain surgery, her life and ours are forever altered.

The oddest thing is that as people were coming to see her post diagnosis and pre -surgery there was a party like atmosphere and folks were regularly congratulating me on my news. I couldn’t keep my mind focused long enough to understand that I was being congratulated for growing life when my mom’s was clearly waning.

As I walked down a spiral of hallways to visit less than 12 hours post surgery, we had no idea of the long range plan, but the words stage 4 and six months were still ringing loud in my head. I honestly don’t know what my mother knew at this point. She was conscious and sitting perched on a chair when I walked in to the ICU. I couldn’t quite process the woman who looked just like my mom had every morning of my childhood – dressed in her housecoat and with her a hair a bit tousled – with the news I had received. She greeted me. “Good morning, Faithy. I had to get out of bed for a bit, but I miss the cat purring.” I was stunned that she could communicate and look so normal.

At first I thought she was confused, but she explained that the machine that ran constantly at her head was very comforting as it sounded just like her cat purring. She also told me a long story about a window – I’ve no idea about the story now, but I clearly remember the word window and that it was important. I remember craving orange juice and feeling nauseous while visiting and thinking to myself how lame that I am feeling sick because of life growing, when she is facing a life or death battle. This thought rapidly sent my spiraling forward in time 8 months when I would be delivering this child – perhaps motherless. This was overwhelming. My first phone call when going into labor with my three sons and my first phone call upon their births was to my mother. She always arrived within an hour of their birth with chocolate chip cookies and coffee – a treat we often shared. Who would bring cookies when this child was born? Who would visit? I know I was well ahead of myself as no one knows the outcome at this point, but my body was physically, mentally and emotionally preparing for the possibility. The doctors checked on me each time they entered the room; often asking after how I was feeling and checking my blood pressure at mom’s insistence. It was a distraction.

And then there was the butterscotch pudding. The hospital, and later the rehab center, always had pudding. It was the one thing I could stomach eating as I visited her throughout the early days and so it became a trick of the brain. A way to survive each visit rife with new news – some of it good, much of it not – as we navigated those first few weeks together. I’m quite sure my father, brother and sister along with numerous others were involved in this part of the journey, but honestly, the only memories I have are of my mother, my unborn child and myself in those rooms full of life and death. Occasionally, one of my sons niggles at the back of my brain, but I know they were never in the hospital room, just deeply embedded in the drama I had playing in my brain. They, too, were going to be highly effected by both life events that have just been set in motion, and at this moment, they know nothing of either pending event.