No. 241 – Arriving Somewhere but Not Here

Performer: Porcupine Tree

Songwriter: Steven Wilson

Original Release: Deadwing

Year: 2005

Definitive Version: Arriving Somewhere …, 2006.

Arriving Somewhere was my gateway to Porcupine Tree, as I mentioned nearly two years ago, and it was another song that was on my mind as well as my playlist when the end began for Mom. In February 2011, I drove home to Columbus, not to take Mom in for surgery as had been planned but to pick her up at the hospital after her superchemo treatment with the idea that the next step was going to be hospice care for what I was sure was her inevitable death.

Well, at least I thought it was inevitable. I wasn’t the only one, but I wasn’t an important one, as it turned out. It was as though everyone in Columbus was consciously avoiding the D word.

I drove in to St. Ann’s Hospital in Westerville—not far from the old stompin’ grounds. When I got there, it didn’t take long to suspect that my layman’s prognosis was more on the money than I might have thought. Mom had two large and very ugly growths protruding from her jaw and a smaller one on her neck.

Mom was in good spirits. She was going to be discharged the next day. I assumed it would be to a facility like Mayfair back during Thanksgiving. Instead, it was more likely to be home.

Wait … home, really? Yes, Mom said. She wanted to be home, and her oncologist concurred. Mom said she’d have a home health-care nurse come five days a week, and she said she could take care of herself by administering the necessary pain-killing drugs through the feed tube in her stomach—a necessity after the superchemo.

Mom and her oncologist were confident that the superchemo seemed to be working—Mom said she knew it was because her pain medication worked again. Both sounded overoptimistic. I mean we’re talking about a woman who has a fast-growing cancer that has metasticized and who already has gone through multiple radiations, chemos and surgeries unsuccessfully.

It seemed logical that Mom was feeling good, because, being in the hospital, she had round-the-clock care. Mom insisted she’d know when the game was over—if she started to lose weight again or if she felt she couldn’t take care of herself. She wasn’t there yet. Well, OK. I’m not a well-known oncologist or the one facing death. If Mom, according to her oncologist, was capable of taking care of herself, who was I to say different? I’m just some schlub.

The next day was a long one. I arrived at St. Ann’s bright and early, but there was a snafu with the insurance regarding her home health-care nurse, which had to be resolved before we could go anywhere. We ended up staying a few extra hours, and that drew Mom’s ire to no end.

She demanded that I tell Jack, who had been spearheading the financial end of Mom’s care up to that point. Of course, he couldn’t do anything, but I told Mom he was on it. A few minutes later, when the approval came for Mom’s home health-care nurse, she was released. “Jack took care of it,” Mom said, never knowing the truth.

I drove Mom home and helped her very laboriously up the stairs. She said her oncologist didn’t think she needed to prescribe a hospital bed downstairs yet. Yeah, I guess there’s plenty of time before we worry about making sure you’re as comfortable as can be.

Well, her doctor might have been saying one thing, and Mom might have believed it, but I wasn’t going to beat around the bush. We had to take care of some business—even if the inevitable was months away.

I asked where her paperwork was—her will, her bills, her bank statements. She had it all lined up, and I ran a few errands, including going to Kinkos to make copies of her legal documents. I even went to the grocery for her for a few items, which was a fool’s errand given that she was on a feeding tube. But again, she was the one who was close to death, so I did it. Then, as I mentioned, I asked her what she wanted to do when it was over. She said she’d think about a final resting spot.

It was after dark, about 6, when I left. It was the right and necessary thing to do, but talking about death with someone who is about to die isn’t the easiest conversation to have. I needed a pleasant diversion.

Fortunately, I had one lined up. I stayed at Dad and Laura’s condominium, and as a matter of circumstance, Laura’s birthday was that day, and Dad was gone—out skiing in Colorado with Matt and Casey.

Will to the rescue: I told Laura I’d take her out for her birthday, and I was looking forward to it after. We went to Haiku in the Short North, Laura’s favorite Japanese restaurant in Columbus. The weather wasn’t very good and it was a weeknight, so the place was empty, but we had a good dinner. I felt myself exhale for the first time in two days.

I went back to see Mom before heading home the next day. I was expecting that I might need more time off to help Mom make the transition to hospice care, but because that wasn’t happening, there was no need for me to stay any longer at this point. It was better to bank the time for later. Mom still seemed to be in good spirits, although she said she wasn’t feeling quite as good as she had the day before.

I was OK on the drive back to Chicago, but coming face to face with precisely what Mom was dealing with took the wind out of me. I’m sure I listened to music or the Steve Dahl Podcast, but the drive felt very quiet and still. As I mentioned, it was on that drive that Mom called to say she wanted her ashes scattered in Lake Michigan off the coast of Chicago. Consider it done.

When I got home, I sent an email to everyone in the family apprising them of the situation. I set up a phone schedule so someone would check in with Mom once per day—no more per her strict instructions—to see how she was doing.

I was planning to head back to Columbus in a few weeks to take Mom to her next appointment with her oncologist to determine the next plan—more chemo or hospice. It turned out I was back on the road less than a week later.

(To be continued)