Um…congrats ma. But what is there to talk about? I was thinking.
Of course, it wasn’t about me, it was about her. It was about her wanting to know that she was loved by her jet-setting oldest son. I have never had a condition that could have been life threatening (and I am not an emotional woman), so it wasn’t easy to understand where she was coming from. And the fact her husband keeled over of (a completely unrelated but not unexpected) cancer really shook her up. All she really wanted was reassurance that I loved her and it was going to take more that closing our irregular biweekly 10-minute conversations to do that.
I imagine cancer, regardless of stage 1 or stage 5, must be somewhere between seriously unnerving and fucking scary. When you are faced with the specter of a horrible death, it’s your closest family you turn to first, because if anyone can empathize and help you get through the mental heaviness of the situation, it’s them.