Watching Death

Today, I went to do my daily one mile run in the gym. When I arrived, there was a woman there with very, very short hair using the elliptical machine. I can't fully explain how I knew, but I immediately knew that she is either currently fighting or recently recovering from cancer. Of course, the hair is the most obvious clue, since the loss of hair is one of the most well known of the side-effects of chemotherapy.

That actually wasn't what stood out to me, though. She was wearing a baseball cap and what I first noticed, instead, was her labored movement. Movement that said "My body is not healthy and I have to use a lot of energy to do what healthy people do easily.". Movement that I recognized very well after nine-and-a-half years of being a stroke survivor. (If you haven't already been introduced to Catherine Miserandino's "The Spoon Theory", I suggest you read it.) This "spoonie" recognized a fellow "spoonie" immediately and only later did I recognize the signs of specifically which illness she battles.

After fighting the urge to cheer her on, I started thinking of my mother, who died almost 25 years ago and I began to remember things like my dad teaching me "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear" and having me proudly show off my new poem to my mother, who lay in bed weak and hairless from chemotherapy (my dad's twisted sense of humor is an entire topic of its own) and my mother so sick she had lost her hearing and didn't always recognize me any more.

Someone recently said that it had never occurred to them that when I say "My mom died when I was seven" that it means that I watched her get sicker and deteriorate for years before she actually died. They didn't grasp before things like being five or so and wanting to climb in the hospital bed with my mother but having well-meaning adults shoo me away or having my mother home from the hospital as a child being like a special guest visiting instead of just a normal day. They never realized that the traumatic part was the years before she actually left this earth.

Honestly, I never really thought of it that way either. In a lot of ways, that was my entire conception of having a mother. Most of the normal parts of having a mom happened when I was at an age before my memories start. I never really thought about the fact that almost every memory of my mother that I didn't get secondhand from someone else is an unusual and traumatic one.

I've always - or at least since the age of seven - had a bit of a barrier. I like people and enjoy being around them, but a select few are extremely close to me and permanently have my love and affection. My husband calls all these other people my "crushes" because I like them, but my adoration is fleeting. I have always thought this was a result if my mother's death. Today, for the first time, I realize that it is probably the long process of observing death that erected that barrier. Though that long process prepared me unbelievably well for my mother's actual death, it made it so much harder for me to let in people I didn't already love before her death.

I've always immensely admired every decision she made during those years (and her ability to laugh at the "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear thing), emulated her grace when I face my own trials and illness and thought I would imitate her if ever faced with preparing my own children for my death. Now, for the first time, I find myself questioning something she did. Though it helped me deal with death at seven, did it have permanent effects that I never fully realized?

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Location:Colorado Springs, United States