The Patient Person for Feb. 23, 2007

• By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Feb 23, 2007

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

The phone woke me early Friday morning.

“Mom?”

Sarah’s voice sounded tremulous across the 913 miles that lay from her doorstep in Chicago to mine in Denham Springs. “I want to come home.” It was obvious that she meant immediately.

She had just read the column about my decision to choose hospice. Of course, I had already talked to her about the decision, but the written words broke through a wall she had built around her feelings since learning a year and a half ago that I had incurable cancer.

As a 23-year-old living and working far away from home, Sarah had cried several times about my illness, but I was not convinced that she was facing the reality of my prognosis. That worried me.

Over the phone line, still groggy from sleep, I agreed that she needed to come home immediately rather than waiting until early March as she had planned. Sarah and I both realized she could no longer put her feelings on a back burner. To best deal with them, she needed to be here.

Despite the seeming impossibility of getting a plane to south Louisiana five days before Mardi Gras, Sarah managed to find a ticket for a Friday afternoon flight from Chicago to New Orleans.

Her brother, Casey, who had arrived home from Florida shortly after midnight, picked her up at the airport. At 8 p.m. — precisely 12 hours after she had called home in tears — Sarah walked through the front door arms outstretched.

It was a Mardi Gras miracle.

People deal with the hardest events in their lives differently. My husband and my father, who is a doctor, seemed to be the first to fully understand what the diagnosis really meant when we received it almost a year and a half ago. Neither of them are inclined to tears when they face life’s struggles, but I’ve read in their every action toward me the deepness of their feelings.

My children cried when Bob called them from the hospital and gave them the unexpected news, but geographical distance has insulated them from some of the hard times, and maybe sheltered them at times from the undeniable fact that I am dying.

My mom has gone on being my mom, worrying about me and doing what her health will allow her to do for her sick child.

My sister has become closer to me, making overnight visits every weekend.