In the catacombs

Meditation on watching my husband walk with his mom through her long-term illness, 10.09.19

Monday was our older daughter’s 9th birthday. My dad and his wife drove from North Dakota on Saturday to be with us.

Mike’s mom had a stroke-like incident on Sunday morning, one of many she’s had in the six years since receiving full-brain radiation for Stage IV metastatic lung cancer, when she was 65.

Mike manages all her care and has walked with her steadily through these endless winding blind corridors of her illness, her layered losses, her achingly slow but steady decline. He visits faithfully every week, takes her delicious meals (nursing home food is uninspiring, to say the least), listens to her, tells her over and over the truth of her unconditional belovedness, which she has always struggled to believe. He goes to all her appointments, her day-long oncology checkups at Mayo.

He serves as the liaison between her and her many, many, many encounters with the behemoth medical world. He did this even when he was working a full-time and demanding corporate job. When information doesn’t get conveyed, records get misdirected, wires get crossed, tests don’t get ordered that should have been, results don’t get relayed, procedures get swallowed up in endless bureaucracy — he’s there to gently check in and make sure things get set right. He gets…