My Husband Put My Sick Mother on an Air Mattress and Said He Made the Rules, but What I Did Next Changed Everything

I said: it’s across from the bathroom.

She said: that’s thoughtful.

I said: the chemo.

She said: yes.

She said: thank you.

She said it simply, without apology attached.

That was the best she could do, and it was enough.

The first treatment was on Thursday.

I drove her.

I sat with her in the infusion room for five hours, which was the time the first session took, and I watched my mother undergo the specific experience of chemotherapy, which is the experience of lying in a chair while a bag of something powerful and expensive drips into your arm, your body both fighting and surrendering, and which produces in the people watching it a particular helplessness.

I could not do the thing I needed to do.

I could not take the cancer out of her.

I could bring her tea.

I could hold her hand when the nausea started, which it did, thirty minutes into the session, the specific wave of it that chemotherapy patients learn to recognize.

She said: I’m sorry.

I said: Mom.

She said: this is not pleasant for you.

I said: it’s less pleasant for you.

She said: I’m sorry.

I said: stop.

She looked at me.

She said: I don’t know how to.

I said: I know.

She said: it’s very hard to let people help.

I said: I know.

She said: your father never had to let anyone help him. He died before he needed it.

I said: yes.

She said: I envy him sometimes.

I said: Mom.

She said: not for being dead. For not having to be the one who is helped.

I said: yes.

I held her hand.