The Day When You Ask A Lot of ‘Whys’

By Meg Seitz

My mom used to pick us up at the bus stop after school if it was raining so we wouldn’t have to run up the street soaking wet and cold. Through the foggy windows of that stale-smelling school bus, we could see her parked at the end of the street –wipers keeping pace across the windshield glass, headlights cutting through the rain.

She was always there.

This is why we got so frustrated the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer. We didn’t hear from her for hours. The woman who was always there…just wasn’t.

From the day Mom got the call that her yearly mammogram was suspicious to the day she went back for re-evaluation to the day she got her results, my brain raced with storm clouds of what ifs. The most looming possibility was that she would die, and I would be a 32-year-old without a mom. I would have to plan a wedding without her, I would be pregnant without being able to ask her questions and I would not be able to call her in tears about my baby growing up. I was frozen in fear yet burning up with anger thinking of all these milestones ahead. In my mind, there was no other alternative. If this was cancer, we would lose her. That’s what cancer does, right? It takes everything?

The weekend before the results, we went shopping. It was a hot, sticky Saturday afternoon. One shop, with its creaky wooden floors, creepy dolls and musty air, sold vintage dresses tucked away on the second floor. I found a knee-length, sleeveless, white chiffon dress. A wedding dress. In that moment, I took off my Rocky t-shirt, and, half-naked on the store’s sales floor, I slipped the dress over my lululemon running shorts. Maret zipped up the back. “Mom, come look at this.” She came over right away. She liked it. The dress was pretty; the dress was different. It fit perfectly. I’ll wear this for my wedding, I thought. If she dies in the next year, at least I have this moment and this dress and mom was here to see. I bought that dress for $27.50. As weird as I felt explaining to the cashier that, yes, I was buying a wedding dress, and no, I was not getting married soon, there was comfort in my mind in that moment.

As I raced to make these memories, time stood still. I could feel it. I could sometimes smell it. And often, it smelled like this vintage shop. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this stale odor of tired air would occupy the months ahead — in my parents’ house, in the synapses of my brain and in my creativity.

Mom’s appointment was at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. At work, twinges of optimism pulsed through me. I’ll hear from her at 2:15, saying it was just a false alarm, and we could all go back to normal. In that case, I would never wear that wedding dress. I would donate it and pretend it never happened.

2:15 came. No text.

Then, it had been an hour. Then two, then three.

Through that afternoon, Maret and I sent dozens of texts to one another. Why haven’t they texted us? What are they doing there? Where the hell are they?

It felt like the bus pulled up, and I cleared the fog only to see that Mom wasn’t there. A text from Maret echoed what I was feeling: “This can’t be good.” Much like the air in that vintage store, the air at work suddenly felt thick and stale.

If everything leading up to this moment was the quiet before a rainstorm, then the next text was the moment the skies opened up.

‘It is malignant,’ Mom texted.

Then it began to pour ‘why’s like blinding rain.

Why is this happening? Why her? Why me? Why us? Why now? Why ever? Why would God do this?

I threw my stuff into my bag. I left work. I drove to my parents’ house.

Mom and I sat outside as she went through what she and Dad heard at the appointment, and what the doctors thought she would need to do next (which was surgery). As I listened, I felt the air thicken again. The mosquitos that hover around their pool bit up my legs as Mom talked. I scratched those bites until they bled that night, and I would re-open those scabs for months.

As Mom talked, she said something that cleared the air a bit, that gave me something to count on like her car parked at the end of the street in the rain.

“We need to be aggressive and available through all of this,” she said.

What exactly does that mean? It means throwing our hoods over our heads, jumping off that giant bottom step and running up the street in the rain, soaking wet. Because now, Mom was the one who would need us.

A few things I’d tell someone who got that text or phone call today:

1. Through this journey, I struggled to be in the moment. I let my mind run away with me. Almost immediately, I started thinking years down the road. At no point did that do me any good. Just be here, now.
2. Today’s technology transforms the way news is delivered. If someone is going into an appointment, and you need to know the results, consider taking a couple minutes to come up with a communication strategy.
3. That cyclical pattern — thick air, stillness, then a gush of truth — would recur the next several months. At first, I thought everything was a dead end. Now, I look back and realize it actually moved in cycles, which would’ve made it easier at the beginning.
4. Those in your life who are diagnosed with cancer will have to be aggressive and available — physically, emotionally and spiritually. You will need to be too.