This morning just before 5 am my youngest son arrived to find me and my husband waiting at the Hospital of the University of Philadelphia to have a cancerous tumor removed from his lower jaw. I came here to ensure that he feels all of my love in the midst of this life altering experience. My tears for him are of mixed emotions, but are primarily shed for the fears that he has chosen not to acknowledge or face. Those things that we keep only to ourselves in the moments that could ultimately change who we are or how we view ourselves. I cry for the lack of a connection to The Divine, The Universe, The Spiritual that he has chosen to comfortable living a life without…and how in This of All possible moments in life, he has to fight alone from the inside without any one of these.
Pray for him. And….for a mother’s heart. I can’t even process my own feelings for all the processing I am doing of how he must feel. If I could only trade my heart for his during this, so that he would have faith, hope and belief to hold on to instead of a simple expectation of clinical explanations from doctors with a mindset of choosing what options are left for him after its all said and done.
On the upside… I have about 18 years of unresolved feelings of guilt for fucking up as a parent at some point (which I believe most parents manage to work a little of this in during their assignment as caretakers & developers of the next generation of the human race. Its not rocket science, but it does come with Responsibilities, Requirements, Rules and Regulations…and NO operations manual) . However, you do get a lot of advice from those who have held the position plus videos and random literature on the topic from others strugglin’ thru the same shit with a different set of circumstances than yours, hoping that there story may help your situation. You have to agree that there is bound to be some Operator Error in a 18 year job under these kind of conditions, and if you haven’t accomplished it in that amount of time….that’s okay. Just Wait….There’s More!!! Because the job doesn’t stop. It just changes when they get older, and the 4 Rs are still in place, except at this point they have evolved into something new and are essentially different than the guidelines you were using on them as whippersnappers . Oh yeah….. and the New R’s…..yeah, well, they don’t come with a manual either. So you’re just figurin’ shit out LITERALLY along the way … forever. (blank stare)
That being said, I needed a moment or two to make sure that he and I were emotionally cool, relationship-wise. That there was no animosity for my previous fall off the parental-wagon many moons ago, and struggle to get back up and look like a full-functioning parent again. In a little corner of the hallway, ducked off from the flow of hospital admittance traffic, was where I was able to take advantage of the moment of truth required of my spirit before he went to be prepped for his procedure. I didn’t cry but my soul was already filled with tears in the expectation that there was some mending for some nearly unforgivable wrong that I’d done, that I needed to do to make sure that our bond would regain strength. But to my heart’s great surprise, I learned that my lack of presence in his life is what has caused the distance between us at this point and there was nothing about my past or behavior that had him feeling anything outside of Loving & Liking him mom. I expressed my happiness that things were fine with us and shared that I’d be restructuring my life to create my presence as a more frequent thing for him. And his siblings.
I miss my boys, both of them. But my heart has pained over the emotional distance between myself and this particular child, for years. As I have just been informed that they are taking him back to the O.R., he is not privy to the depth of feelings behind this moment, this opportunity for me. I have a gratitude that cannot be expressed right now, but it is offered in small portion to Kevin for allowing me the chance to hear his heart and in larger part to God for creating a moment in the midst of all this, so that my son & I can have a precious memory of our very own just before the next 4 hours change his facial profile and his life.
It felt so nice to hug him..to kiss him, to touch his face. I miss my baby boy and the closeness we shared as we essentially grew up together. (I was 17 when he was born). I look forward to rekindling the tightness and making memories in the future just as fantastic as the ones in our past.
Thanking God, Mother Nature, The Universe for aligning the time, weather, opportunity and open hearts to create the first of many healing moments.
Faith Is The Substance Of Things Unseen
Self Inflicted Exposition 