The year my mom got sick and died, I was a senior associate trying to make partner in a law firm halfway across the country from home. I made several trips back and forth, barely managing to keep my shit together while at work. After one regrettably public breakdown, I generally kept my door closed when I was in the office.
One afternoon, I was in my office organizing files as I was preparing to go home for my mom’s final days. A junior associate came in to discuss a case. As she was leaving, she casually leaned in my doorway and chirped, “Hey! How’s your mom?”
It’s not that I was averse to being asked. In fact, I found it odd when someone didn’t raise the subject; couldn’t they see the scarlet “C” branded on my face? Couldn’t they hear my inner-eight-year-old’s incessant screams: “My mommy is dying! My mommy is dying!”
Besides, at this point, the bleakness of the situation was pretty well-known. All treatment had stopped, and it was generally acknowledged that I would be returning only after a funeral. So I was long past the point of caring about making people feel uncomfortable by providing too much (real) information. I just thought, if people are going to ask (and they should), they better be prepared for a bummer of an answer.
“Not good. She can’t do chemotherapy and they’ve given her six months, at the most.”
She blinked her big doe eyes blankly for a moment.
“You know, to live. They’ve given her six months to live.” (It would be six weeks.)
She blinked again, shifted her stance. Then her face brightened.
“Oh!” she smiled, “That’s no fun!”
“No fun?” I thought. “No fun?”
“No fun” is for “I have to work late” or “My car died” or “In a minute I’m going to stick this pen in your neck.” Not “my mother is about to die.”
But what I said was: “No.” Shaking my head regretfully, “Not fun at all.” After she had left, I kept staring at the doorway, wondering if that exchange had really happened.
In times of death and trauma, people tell themselves that there is nothing they can say that will help (I know I used to think so). But that doesn’t mean that you can’t say something that is wrong. It’s important to treat these kinds of conversations with kid gloves; they require a different level of gravity and care than usually enters our daily exchanges. And truly, when in doubt, a simple “I’m sorry” will do. It even helps a bit.
Posted by sara on January 19, 2009 at 3:18 pm
An old friend texted me with free Mets tickets two days after our mom died. A guy who had known my mom as well. As this was the first contact from him since she died, I asked if he had read the announcement. His text back was “Oh yeah. Condolences and all that. Do you or Aram want the tickets?”
I still haven’t let that one go.