Sharkiegirl
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Green
It was early summer, the sun just starting to creep down behind the hills. I wasn’t aware that I could run for solid 2 miles, but the most I slowed on my frantic trek was at the road, jerking to a halt as a veil of tears hid the approaching car from my peripheral vision. The low hanging branches of the trees grabbed at my shirt and hair as I reached the worn in path of the Robert Frost trail. If anyone had seen me, they would’ve thought I was trying to escape something horrid, something terrifying beyond any reasonable belief. And in a way, I was; though it was nothing concrete. Not a person, nor an animal, it was the voice of my grandmother that was pursuing me. She had sounded empty and surreal over the phone, and her words whirled in my head. The same dreaded phrase consuming, eroding my mind, creeping into my chest and knocking down the walls I had worked so hard to build up around my battered and vulnerable heart.
“Your mom has cancer Leah, its stage four.”
On the phone, I muttered dismissive and emotionless “Okays” as my grandmother weepily choked out the news. My throat holding back what felt like a dagger of ice as I desperately fought off tears.
Cancer….Cancer….Cancer.
It was my mom, not some Lifetime movie about the hardship of a struggling suburban family. Not the next-door neighbor. My mom. Her leg pain, it’s a tumor, it’s malignant, and now the cancer is everywhere. Her blood saturated with it. It was all too real. The house, the walls, my bedroom at my aunt and uncle’s home. It made the discovery that much worse, somehow proving to me that that all of this was as real as the structure of the house itself. But the field, oh that field, it was a like a dream; an anti-reality at the end of the trail. So I ran.
The trees become more and more scarce, thinning as I near the clearing. I fly over tripping roots and grabbing shrubs. The ones that always confirm my clumsiness when I’m merely walking now don’t seem to exist. When I reach the huge expanse of grass and wildflowers, I race for the middle, there the grass is highest. My usual paranoia about spiders and ticks doesn’t even enter my mind while I tromp through the meadow, my chest aching with exhausted panting and ensuing sobs. The spot I stopped was the point where my legs gave out, crumpling beneath me as grief took over my body.
As I collapsed to the ground, I started to cry, everything trembling. Fear and sorrow and confusion wringing each harsh sob out of me, my whole frame shaking with raw emotions. The breeze gotten strong and I looked up.
There was a wall of grass around me, and it was alive. Not just in the sense that they were plants, but something more. The breeze that made it sway also made it whisper, hushing me comfortingly as I cried, as my mother would have done if she were with me just now. The wind dried the tears on my face, which usually would have been the duty of her smooth, warm hands. I admired my surroundings further.
The birds hopped around in the grass frantically, at first wondering what this sniveling intruder was doing in their home. But after a while they went about their business, coming within inches of me as I sat completely still. The grass, wildflowers, trees, everything was green. And it wasn’t just color. It was a sensation. Green was breathing, it was energy, and it was alive; clinging to and sinking inside everything around it, including me, now that I was in its presence. The green resonated through me, the writhing worm of dread in my gut calming, and my hands eased their shaking. Even the most dried and shriveled of trees was green in this place. It confused me how I had never felt this before, never felt so over aware in this hilly field that I had been through countless times. I sat and thought.
Nature, what is it for me? It is something I use and hurt without thought, maybe, but I appreciate that nature has one quality that most people do not have; unlimited forgiveness. Nature does not get angry when you cut down a tree, or steal the fruits of its hard earned labor without a thank you or second thought, nor does it seek revenge when you kill its children, the largest whale or tiniest bug. Nature doesn’t get uncomfortable, tell you to stop, or lie when you cry, and no matter how much cruelty you as a single person have unleashed on it, nature holds no grudges, and does what you hope the best of friends would do; it sits and listens.
So there I sat, in the middle of a field, the tears for my mother that sunk to the ground were the only return for all that the trees and grass did for me that day. I got up wobbly kneed, and walked home after about an hour of being heard, after an hour of being brought away from reality by the greenness and liveliness of that otherworldly place; Long enough for me to be able to bear, for now, the realization that my mother would die before I graduated from college, before I could ever get married or have kids. It still scared me, and made my stomach turn, made tears spill from my eyes. But it didn’t demolish me as it had done only an hour ago, didn’t consume me and make me frantic to escape.
Today, I go and see my mother at the Fisher Home. A nursing home of sorts, but officially an end of life center, for those with less than six months to live. Her hair is starting to fall out due to the chemotherapy that isn’t helping her anyway; her hands shake just as mine did the day I found out about her cancer. Her shoulder bones, sternum, cheekbones, are all pronounced because of the weight she has lost. She hurts, and is confused, and what amazes me is that she worries about me. Not about being completely bedridden, not about the intense pain, or the spreading cancer. She’s concerned about my job and about where I’m going this weekend, only to then think that she is back home, wondering who all the people are out in the hallway. She apologizes, saying how much she wishes she could be there for me always, apologizes for all the years of pain that I’ve gone through, and I console her, holding her cold, pale hand and only shaking my head. I think about that field, maybe she’ll end up in a meadow like that. Forever, where her worries and fears are melted away by an unknown force of nature, surrounding her in warmth and wildflowers. Nature is the beginning and it could be the end, and that’s one of the reassuring thoughts I have about the quickly approaching end of my mothers life. It could be better. Be relief. Everything will be green.
After note: This account was written in September of 2008, my mother, Patricia, who passed away on November 22nd, 2008. This is dedicated to her.
It was early summer, the sun just starting to creep down behind the hills. I wasn’t aware that I could run for solid 2 miles, but the most I slowed on my frantic trek was at the road, jerking to a halt as a veil of tears hid the approaching car from my peripheral vision. The low hanging branches of the trees grabbed at my shirt and hair as I reached the worn in path of the Robert Frost trail. If anyone had seen me, they would’ve thought I was trying to escape something horrid, something terrifying beyond any reasonable belief. And in a way, I was; though it was nothing concrete. Not a person, nor an animal, it was the voice of my grandmother that was pursuing me. She had sounded empty and surreal over the phone, and her words whirled in my head. The same dreaded phrase consuming, eroding my mind, creeping into my chest and knocking down the walls I had worked so hard to build up around my battered and vulnerable heart.
“Your mom has cancer Leah, its stage four.”
On the phone, I muttered dismissive and emotionless “Okays” as my grandmother weepily choked out the news. My throat holding back what felt like a dagger of ice as I desperately fought off tears.
Cancer….Cancer….Cancer.
It was my mom, not some Lifetime movie about the hardship of a struggling suburban family. Not the next-door neighbor. My mom. Her leg pain, it’s a tumor, it’s malignant, and now the cancer is everywhere. Her blood saturated with it. It was all too real. The house, the walls, my bedroom at my aunt and uncle’s home. It made the discovery that much worse, somehow proving to me that that all of this was as real as the structure of the house itself. But the field, oh that field, it was a like a dream; an anti-reality at the end of the trail. So I ran.
The trees become more and more scarce, thinning as I near the clearing. I fly over tripping roots and grabbing shrubs. The ones that always confirm my clumsiness when I’m merely walking now don’t seem to exist. When I reach the huge expanse of grass and wildflowers, I race for the middle, there the grass is highest. My usual paranoia about spiders and ticks doesn’t even enter my mind while I tromp through the meadow, my chest aching with exhausted panting and ensuing sobs. The spot I stopped was the point where my legs gave out, crumpling beneath me as grief took over my body.
As I collapsed to the ground, I started to cry, everything trembling. Fear and sorrow and confusion wringing each harsh sob out of me, my whole frame shaking with raw emotions. The breeze gotten strong and I looked up.
There was a wall of grass around me, and it was alive. Not just in the sense that they were plants, but something more. The breeze that made it sway also made it whisper, hushing me comfortingly as I cried, as my mother would have done if she were with me just now. The wind dried the tears on my face, which usually would have been the duty of her smooth, warm hands. I admired my surroundings further.
The birds hopped around in the grass frantically, at first wondering what this sniveling intruder was doing in their home. But after a while they went about their business, coming within inches of me as I sat completely still. The grass, wildflowers, trees, everything was green. And it wasn’t just color. It was a sensation. Green was breathing, it was energy, and it was alive; clinging to and sinking inside everything around it, including me, now that I was in its presence. The green resonated through me, the writhing worm of dread in my gut calming, and my hands eased their shaking. Even the most dried and shriveled of trees was green in this place. It confused me how I had never felt this before, never felt so over aware in this hilly field that I had been through countless times. I sat and thought.
Nature, what is it for me? It is something I use and hurt without thought, maybe, but I appreciate that nature has one quality that most people do not have; unlimited forgiveness. Nature does not get angry when you cut down a tree, or steal the fruits of its hard earned labor without a thank you or second thought, nor does it seek revenge when you kill its children, the largest whale or tiniest bug. Nature doesn’t get uncomfortable, tell you to stop, or lie when you cry, and no matter how much cruelty you as a single person have unleashed on it, nature holds no grudges, and does what you hope the best of friends would do; it sits and listens.
So there I sat, in the middle of a field, the tears for my mother that sunk to the ground were the only return for all that the trees and grass did for me that day. I got up wobbly kneed, and walked home after about an hour of being heard, after an hour of being brought away from reality by the greenness and liveliness of that otherworldly place; Long enough for me to be able to bear, for now, the realization that my mother would die before I graduated from college, before I could ever get married or have kids. It still scared me, and made my stomach turn, made tears spill from my eyes. But it didn’t demolish me as it had done only an hour ago, didn’t consume me and make me frantic to escape.
Today, I go and see my mother at the Fisher Home. A nursing home of sorts, but officially an end of life center, for those with less than six months to live. Her hair is starting to fall out due to the chemotherapy that isn’t helping her anyway; her hands shake just as mine did the day I found out about her cancer. Her shoulder bones, sternum, cheekbones, are all pronounced because of the weight she has lost. She hurts, and is confused, and what amazes me is that she worries about me. Not about being completely bedridden, not about the intense pain, or the spreading cancer. She’s concerned about my job and about where I’m going this weekend, only to then think that she is back home, wondering who all the people are out in the hallway. She apologizes, saying how much she wishes she could be there for me always, apologizes for all the years of pain that I’ve gone through, and I console her, holding her cold, pale hand and only shaking my head. I think about that field, maybe she’ll end up in a meadow like that. Forever, where her worries and fears are melted away by an unknown force of nature, surrounding her in warmth and wildflowers. Nature is the beginning and it could be the end, and that’s one of the reassuring thoughts I have about the quickly approaching end of my mothers life. It could be better. Be relief. Everything will be green.
After note: This account was written in September of 2008, my mother, Patricia, who passed away on November 22nd, 2008. This is dedicated to her.
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