To my mother’s oncologist
I know what it means to deny the body. My mother’s breaths contracted like labor I would not acknowledge until the pain pulled my legs apart. You pushed chemo days before she died, when she could not walk, and the midwife asked if I was afraid to push. I was. Alone, I still bled from birth when you delivered the words: precipitous decline, precipitous as my labor, meaning: time is not what we thought. If only I could forgive pushing when it was time to let go. If only we had let bodies know their own time.
2 replies on “To my mother’s oncologist”
Gorgeous rendering of these two liminal states side by side. Thank you for this.
Heartbreaking and comforting at the same time. My dad died a few weeks ago and I’ve been thinking a lot about how the “waves” of grief aren’t unlike labor pains. You have captured that sentiment and much more perfectly here.