An exhausting topic – Death

I just came back home. I took my mother to the gynecologist for a routine check. She was very nervous about it all, and I can understand it. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and a part of her left breast had to be removed. Let’s say she was still lucky in spite of being ill, because she did not have to undergo chemotherapy and the tumor could be totally removed. 

All this situation made me think about an important question: what would I do without my mother?

Sometimes I think I could not be without her. I know what it means to have the feeling of losing her. Four years ago, as she told me about her diagnosis, I felt almost fainting because I thought, "here we are, that’s the end.". I feared she would have to struggle against the illness in the same way Marvin’s brother is doing at the present time. I feared she would lose strength day by day, fading away. I feared she would leave me alone in the world. After the operation, when the doctor said it was all ok, I felt as if I had been born again. 

Usually, parents pass away before their children. Well, my father is very old – a 91-year-old cantankerous man. I love him, no matter what. He has never played an important role in my life; every time I have needed some support, he has not lifted a finger to help me. One of the things I blame him the most for is not letting me change High School. I was ignored, humiliated, bullied, excluded, made fun of, and as I explained to my parents what was going on, my father just answered that this was just going to make me strong. He even added that, had I changed High School, I would have behaved like a loser. As I said before, my father is old, and I guess that the day will come in which we will have to say farewell… I pray that this might be in ten years or even more – my father could be the kind of person who lives to be a hundred – but the day will come. Inexorably. I have come to terms with the possibility that my father could die. I am also ready for emergencies every time of the day (and of the night): even if I stay at home, I get dressed and ready as if I had to go out, just in case I have to take my father to the doctor. During the night, I am never totally asleep. A part of me is always awake and ready to get up immediately as soon as it hears a sound coming from the upper storey. I am a sort of part-time daddy-sitter, a nurse and a caregiver for my father. I know that, unless something happens in between, he will go before me. After years of removing this possibility from my mind, I have learned to accept it. 

But my mother… I do not accept the fact that she is a mortal human being. I live in constant symbiosis with her, I feel for her, I relate to her, I connect to her in everything and in every moment. She is the reason why I am lonely, and the reason why I most probably do not allow anybody to become close to me. She wants my devotion, my obedience, my love; sometimes I think that I almost worship her. She isolated me from the world surrounding me and now everything I have is her. I could never accept her death, because this would be my death as well. Still, I should rather think over the matter because usually, a daughter survives her mother. How could my life without my mother look like? 

I was thinking over this issue while sitting in the gynecologist’s waiting room. I dislike thinking about Death, but the more I remove it from my mind, the more it becomes insisting. Of course, at the very moment of my mother’s death I could entirely lose contact to reality; I guess I would not even be able to speak or to think. Without my parents, I would find myself alone. Maybe I would move back to Basel, and leave this horrid town I’m living in at the moment behind myself forever? Apart from the location, there are two possible ways my life without my parents could take: either dwelling in my parents’ memory, or building up an independent life. I could, on the one hand, live like a hermit in a flat on my own and cry lamentation for years, waiting for my own death in order to be with my parents as soon as possible or waiting for me to find the courage to end my life; on the other hand, I could find a man or a woman, settle down, find friends and social contacts, find a job, live my life with enthusiasm in spite of my loss. Of course, it takes time; but I know that if I cannot live my life to the fullest at the present time it is also because my family built up the "neurotic dysfunctional trio mom-dad-me". I am trapped in a golden cage and I fear I could never live outside it, but maybe I underestimate myself. I could very well, and I would like to do it before my parents die, actually. 

Writing about this topic exhausted me. I hate thinking and writing about Death. I always have the impression that Death is like the still water of a lake: better not to throw stones in it, because you never know which monster sleeps in its depths and could be possibly woken up. 

Still, let’s go through life with the Fire of Enthusiasm. Take gentle care of yourselves!