as i mentioned previously, i ordered a copy of my mother's death certificate a few weeks ago. it arrived today. i opened it knowing that i didn't really have any set expectations. i didn't think i would learn anything new about how or when she died. my memory of being told of her death is still quite vivid and i'm kinda tearing up just thinking about it.
i also remember being told at some point that she'd had a heart attack. this is what i told people for years because it's what i had been told. i think i was in high school when my father told me that while yes, she'd had a heart attack, it was really the cancer that killed her. i think we were in the car on a road trip, maybe. i just remember sitting there stunned because up to that point, no one had mentioned cancer and if they had, i shut it down with "no, it was a heart attack" because again, that's what i had been told.
i thought about that while i read the death certificate. sure enough, it basically said that she died of a heart attack and she had cancer. none of this is/was surprising to me. what i found noteworthy, though, was being able to forgive my family for...i don't know...softening the truth a bit. i mean, no 7 year old should have to figure out what cancer means and why it took away someone they loved. all i knew is that my mother was sick and had been in and out of the hospital and then one day i came home after school and she was gone.
like, current me can appreciate the fact that my father and everyone else let me continue making imaginary food to feed her. here, have this invisible soup. or a slice of make-believe cake. my father would request rabbit stew and i wish i could remember how/why that became a running joke - maybe i had a stuffed toy rabbit - and so i'd make imaginary rabbit stew. sure, why not?
as dysfunctional as my family was/is, they somehow managed to keep things relatively "normal" for me during that time. i still went to school and went to my best friend's house after school, which was convenient not only because our mothers were good friends, but also because we lived on the same block. my father still had to go to work every day, as did my brothers, and then come home and take care of my mother and me. i don't know how they did it.
hence the extension of grace while reading my mother's death certificate. i'm choosing to believe that they did the best they could with what they had. maybe they needed to believe it was "only" a heart attack (and by no means am i trivializing the severity of heart attacks) in order to wade through their grief and, by extension, help me manage my own. i'm going to believe that there was no malicious intent behind them not disclosing her cancer. i'm ok with thinking that my father was waiting until he knew i could handle it before telling me.
it's still #fuckcancer forever and always, amen.
