devant 2 portraits de ta mere

I was going through some pictures today. My mom used to be a very pretty lady, but that was 30 years ago. She's not in her 20s anymore. I had my played my part, being the first born, in digging those trenches in her face. It's sad to look at pictures of your mom when she looked like she didn't have a care in the world, when she was younger than you are now, and then to look at her now. It reminds me of an Émile Nelligan poem.

DEVANT DEUX PORTRAITS DE MA MÈRE

Ma mère, que je l'aime en ce portrait ancien,
Peint aux jours glorieux qu'elle était jeune fille,
Le front couleur de lys et le regard qui brille
Comme un éblouissant miroir vénitien !

Ma mère que voici n'est plus du tout la même ;
Les rides ont creusé le beau marbre frontal ;
Elle a perdu l'éclat du temps sentimental
Où son hymen chanta comme un rose poème.

Aujourd'hui je compare, et j'en suis triste aussi,
Ce front nimbé de joie et ce front de souci,
Soleil d'or, brouillard dense au couchant des années.

Mais, mystère de coeur qui ne peut s'éclairer !
Comment puis-je sourire à ces lèvres fanées ?
Au portrait qui sourit, comment puis-je pleurer ?
                                                                    -Émile Nelligan

I was trying to find a picture of my parents' friend who is dying of cancer. I intended to draw a card and give it to her when I was going to visit her today. I wasted too much of time and I did not draw the card. It was time to leave.

I was dreading this all week. I knew I wouldn't know what to say, what to do. There isn't a program in university that teaches you what to say to someone who has a few weeks to live. I can read a 500 page book, write a 10 page essay, paint a landscape, draw posters, extract teeth, create a 3d model of a fantasy creature, make 64.70$ an hour, repair cavities, I have doctorate from the biggest French university in North America, … but when it comes to this, like most things in the real world, I'm a complete failure.

Her husband, who is also my godfather, was there. Her coworkers were also there, they thought I was her son. She told me she was really tired. She was balding. Her eyelids looked heavier than whales. Someone had designed her, using her skeleton and her thin brown paper-bag like skin and had forgotten to add layers of muscle and adipose tissue. There was only little hill under the blanket, surely corresponding to where her uterus was. On the desk, close to her bed, there was a binder with medical articles bout her illness, flowers and a card, a Vietnamese prayer book and other catholic items, a picture of her, healthy and smiling with a cup in her hand. Her designer had removed all saturation from her, yet the framed photograph was bright and vivid. Other than seeing my grandparents cry at my uncle's funeral in 1998, while half naked soccer fans drove by the streets outside the funeral home, honking and screaming in jubilation, this was the most godawful juxtaposition I have ever witnessed.

I spent most of the time there reading the articles, staring at the corner of the desk, staring at the bottom of the vase, at the medical machinery, sometimes at her sleepy face. How do you deal with this? In about 30 minutes I will have to leave to attend a mass at her house. How does my godfather deal with this, organizing his wife's death? Making calls to invite friends and family, finding a priest, making sure there will be food for the guests? How do you organize the death of someone you have lived 30 years with? His youngest son had to go buy cookies, because last week we were also at her house praying. How do you go to the supermarket to buy chocolate chip cookies for the people who will be snacking after having prayed for your terminally ill mother? How do you study for your math exam 3 days later? Her siblings were there last week, cleaning out the fridge, throwing out the expired and rotten food, scraping the stained inner walls of the fridge. She hasn't been home in awhile after all. How do you deal with this? Why do you have to be in a situation like this?

The last time I saw her she dropped by the clinic with a dental emergency. Her temporary crown had fallen off. I tried to cement it back temporarily as best as I could without interfering with the work of her dentist because the work was still in progress. She gave me a ride home afterward. She asked about what I was studying, saying that she admired me for going through dental school even when my heart wasn't in it and to go back to school to pursue my interests. She said I was a good boy to have obeyed my father like that. She was a nice lady. She was really hard working, regularly working over 40 hours a week to run her plastic company. She was a good person and I wish I didn't already know the answers to all the questions I've asked and to why she has to go through this. I already figured it out all those years ago in that funeral home when the world cup fans where driving around as happy as my family was sad. Justice or fairness is about equality and equality is about balance. And there is balance in the world. Someone will be unlucky and someone will be lucky. Someone will be very rich and many will be very poor. Someone at this very moment will be twitching due to an orgasm and someone else will be twitching due to a stroke or a seizure. My grandpa will let his face melt in his hands while standing in front of his son's corpse while a soccer fan will wave his arms and flag in celebration. It all balances out. Who says life's not fair?

There isn't even a fraction of residual Kimveer Gill effect left in my routine. The scare and the questions and the resolved and the motivation probably lasted a good week and I was back to thinking about how I will do the next project with the minimum amount of effort, about my receding hairline, about how it would be cool to the be greatest graphic novelist in the history of the universe, about why I can't get laid a reasonable 3 times a week, about who's the coolest boxer, about girls and other trivial pursuits. My hairline doesn't seem that bad after having seen chemo rob someone of half of their hair. My effeminate build doesn't seem that bad after having seen a sleepy skeleton. My annoying libido does not seem to matter at all when I think of what's happening to this family. I hope this keeps me in check longer than the KG effect.

When we were talking about our antisocial dads, her youngest son told us that she wanted him to live at home until he got married. There's not much left in the Pandora's box for her after all. Her husband demanded that they try curing her again, one last shot with chemo or a drug. The odds are against her, she suffers from a rare cancer, uterine leiomyosarcoma, and since she is so weak, treatment might remove all the time she has left here. It's come to this: last requests and praying or begging, unless you see a difference. It's come to the point where a mother asks her baby boy to live at home until he gets married because she doesn't want her husband to be lonely when she's gone.

When I left the room and walked away from the hospital I almost cried. There was heavy quicksand in my chest and my organs were sinking slowly. I can only imagine what this family is going through, how empty and heavy their chests must feel, how pricked and sharp the acid coated spears that are piercing them are. I can only imagine how horrible it must be to have to work on an engineering project at a time like this. I don't even want to imagine how Christmas will be for them without their mom, his wife, their sister …

                                                                  -DVH, 18/11/2006 – 19/11/2006