A lot has happened since my last blog post that has pulled me away from the studio and making art. This is going to be a long and honest account of my life these past few months so feel free to jump ship now, or strap in.
In early November my parents called a family meeting with my brother, sister and I. Family meetings are usually never good news and this was no exception. My parents told us that my Dad had stage one lung cancer. We were told he is lucky because lung cancer is very rarely found in stage one and that he will have the small tumor in his upper left lobe removed and will most likely be just fine. I was gutted. I had a hard time processing this but my siblings and I jumped into caretaker mode and signed up to help with attending doctors visits and reading through medicine and surgery details. We are a good team, my siblings and I, and for that I am profoundly grateful.
Two weeks later, on Thanksgiving evening I was with my parents at my sister’s house when my Mom said that she needed to go to the Emergncy room. She had been having headaches that she called “zingers” that she attributed to her MS. These headaches had been sporadically happening over the course of the past year. This particular evening, the zinger was not going away and was excruciating. My sister and I helped her to the car and drove her to Abbot Northwestern Hospital. They had a one visitor policy so my sister took her in and I waited in the car for news while also letting my brother know what was going on. After what felt like an eternity (about 2 hours) my sister called me and said the nurses in the ER would allow me back there to be with both of them. When I walked into the room my Mom was in the hospital bed, my sister sitting by her side, holding her hand. I pulled up a chair and sat on the other side of the bed and held my Mother’s other hand. It was then that a doctor came in to explain to us the results of all the tests and imaging they had done. He sat in front of a computer and pulled up multiple images of her lungs and her skull and began to explain to us that our Mom had stage 4 lung cancer. That the cancer had spread to her skull and that, that was the cause of the headaches. That the cancer had spread to her spine and her bones. We held her hand and we cried. We cried with her and she said “shit” and I said “I’m so sorry” and she replied “I did this to myself”. And she was right. She smoked in the house we lived in when we were growing up. She smoked in the car as she drove us around when we were kids. She smoked in the dead of winter in the freezing cold out on her deck because my Dad wouldn’t let her smoke in their home. My whole life, all I ever wanted was for her to quit. I remember asking her, pleading with her when I was a kid. She would get really annoyed with me and tell me to lay off. And now, here we were, and I was heart broken and furious.
We took her home at 2 in the morning to my Dad who had been waiting anxiously. Immediately my sister, brother and I begin organizing a slew of new pills. She needed to keep track of what to take and when to take it and what appointments and treatments were happening and who was going to take her. After all, my Dad was about to have his surgery and would be in the hospital for a few days himself. He was in no position to take all this on. What followed was 2 months of doctors appointments, 5 Emergncy room visits, 4 long hospital stays, radiation and one round of chemotherapy that destroyed what little life she had left in her. My mother passed away with my sister and I at her side at 6am on January 28th, 2023. My Dad had his tumor removed and has since made a full recovery and is cancer free.
I have never had to grapple with grief in this way before. It comes in waves. Sometimes the waves are far apart and small. Other times they are massive and very close together. I know most of us will experience this type of grief. Nothing can prepare you for it.
I am back in the studio and working hard at getting a few new pieces ready for Art-A-Whirl. I hope to see you there. I won’t have a ton of new work, but I will by Art Attack in the Fall.
Best,
-Cara Jo
