By Edna Wallace

Other Voices

My mother is not going to go gently into the night. She was 77 when her lung cancer was discovered and there was no way that that could have happened. My father had died six months ago, excruciatingly, of Alzheimers - or rather we’d let his pneumonia go. She was free at last. No-one to be responsible for (the kids were all adults) and my father was dead; no-one to have to submit to. Chula Vista may have been sunny for the two of them while they were the average unhappy couple, but once Dad was safely locked into a dementia unit, she was going to San Francisco. To an elegant old retirement hotel there. To three grand meals served by livened waiters. To a lobby with chandeliers. Off she went.

That was in the February, one year before her diagnosis. Of course, at the same time, we moved Dad up here~near me since I drive (and Mom didn’t really want him). He spent his last four months here, until he caught pneumonia and we let him go. My potbellied father starved to death. After that, Mom felt quite an onslaught of guilt and we all sat Shiva (for a few days). David, the observant brother, kept it up for the required year.

But then Mom was okay. She got a whole bunch of new clothes (black wasn’t a Jewish tradition anyway) from her niece in Great Neck. She planned her outfits careflilly for the Friday social hour, the Sunday brunch, the times I came up and took her to the theater. There was James at the front desk to dress up for. He was 40-something and gay, but somehow she thought she had a chance. And Sidhar in the dining room always called her ~~dear”; she thought maybe he was interested. That was how it went from June (no, probably from February) ~till the first week in January.

My mom’s a nice lady. She’d babysat for us on many weekends and she always paid our way (my brothers and I) when we came to visit or dine with her. She was excited about her new life. And I’m sure she would have found an elegant older-gentleman companion if she hadn’t gotten sick. But she got sick.

First they thought it was another blood clot. She had had a few of them. But it wasn’t a clot, and it didn’t go away. More tests, more breathlessness, then the dark spot on the Xray, and the biopsy.

Finally the appalling diagnosis: Stage IV lung cancer, with a prognosis of six to nine months. The first oncologist took one look at my angry, scared, very small-looking mom and said ‘I wouldn’t suggest chemo - she can’t take it.” Besides she’s old. What does she have to complain about?

But my mom wasn’t old enough. And mom had never smoked, neither had dad nor any of us kids. How could this happen to her? It wasn’t fair. I think the anger alone made her fight.

This is how God repaid her? Wasn’t the Holocaust enough? Wasn’t serving my dad for 40 years enough? She hated it all: God, the hospital, the nurses, her domineering husband, the young Rabbi sent to counsel her.

She fired that first oncologist. She got another one her own age and this one gave her the combo chemo she was ca~ing for We had to trust in him.

Well, it’s September now. Mom’s alive. She’s not doing too well. She’s weak and tired. And very very scared. Now she talks a bit about who will get what after her passing or about the double plot she’d purchased when we buried Dad. She sits and watches television a lot (despite my protests). Cancer is a great reason not to go out and do things - but that’s my issue, not hers.

She’s always had that strawy kind of hair, which she’s now lost completely. But between turbans and an attractive wig, she never has to see her bald pate. Dr. Gladt, the second oncologist, has her come in three times a week to measure the tumor activity and test her blood levels. That besides continual chemo.

But mom isn’t ready to go, as I’ve said. She’ll keep taking that chemo (she’s good at routines), indefinitely, she’d like to think .. as an outpatient. But Dr. Gladt likes to keep a close watch on his patients. That means he likes them in the hospital where he can get to them.

Mom cries a lot. She hates the hospital. People die in hospitals and she’s sure she will. So she says she’s fine. She won’t tell him the worrying symptoms. All she wants is her elegant 1-bedroom suite, her two TVs, and to dine with her elderly lady friends. Not with the men folk anymore, no more flirting, no more golden dreams, no more “Naked Men Singing.” Just small wants. She wants to live. She doesn’t want to die in the hospital.

And you know what? I’m going along. It’s too bad mom never lived the swinger’s life in the city, but maybe at 76, she was too old anyway (she didn’t think so). But I’ll let her live out the next n months the way she wants. I won’t squeal on her to Dr. Gladt - no matter the swollen feet or the breathlessness. She’s a fighter; let her win this war.

Wallace is a Los Altos resident.