Last year, my sister and I desperately wished our mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer, instead of a rare esophageal kind that has almost no longstanding protocol.
This year, my sister and I fervently wished our mom would receive chemo, instead of having to put it off another week because of platelet counts so low, a dose would guarantee a hospital stay and internal bleeding and...
That's how fucked up this disease makes you. That you'll whole-heartedly and willingly wish your mom [different] cancer and painful, awful, horrible procedures. On her birthday.
The only, only remorse I felt either time was that I knew we couldn't make either wish come to pass.
That's how fucked up I've become.
***
I didn't want to write this, because of the possibilty that next year I'd be looking back at it as her last birthday--a likelihood I have to accept may come to pass, moreso now than I did last year--and feel awful at what I'd wished for her.
Mostly, though, I didn't want to write it because I am so afraid that I will actually still be able to wish her something, and I will look back at this and think it was nothing compared to what I'm wishing her right then.
That there'll be no remorse.
And that I'll just be fucked.
