March 7th in Posso's Prompts

‘Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbound set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.’ - Hazel Lancaster, A Fault In Our Stars

My mom’s been on my ass about my health recently. She’s checked in more than normal and that’s usually a result of something bad happening in the world. Whenever someone famous gets a good old public shoutout for having cancer, my mother is on top of that and I have a text immediately.
Well, the last week or so was rough for my mom. My dad texted me last week saying a coworker of my mom’s that she was very fond of had just been diagnosed with a later stage cancer. Pops said mom was very upset because her friend was only 39 and had three kids. Today, as I was fucking around between doctor appointments and work stuff my mom texted me saying her coworker had had a stroke and ended up passing away in the hospital. It hadn’t even been ten full days since the woman had been diagnosed.

Trying to imagine having your life taken before anyone has time to prepare for it has always been something I’ve feared. Suffice to say, along with the selfishness I felt about the thought of taking my own life, it was the reason a few times where I decided I didn’t need to take that last step down the one way street. Imagining the grief entailed with having to tell your family you are sick, only to have one week before a complication from your sickness kills you? Something like that is just another reminder of how quickly you could be gone from the world. The way that it still affects my mother, the woman who has been a hospice care and home care nurse in a small town for over 20 years, with such profoundness always takes me aback. The woman has been paid to care for people that are sentenced to die. Sometimes it’s a month, sometimes she’s had the same patients for years, but I have always respected my mother for having to deal with aging, debilitation, and death and in such a caring, graceful and empowering manner. Mom has always had such a giant heart - she’s the one that gives blood at all the drives, hands change to anyone asking with no thought, feeds people that haven’t had a home cooked meal in ages - through my grumpy, snarky, off putting ire, I haven’t been able to avoid the part of that she has given to me. I end up seeing my mom at times when I go out of the way to make everyone happy. That consistent self doubt that you’re never good enough and that sense to satiate the need to please everyone is something I saw in my mom and something that I picked up. It could be conveyed as a poor quality to have but I’ve always admired my mom when it comes to it as she uses it to go above and beyond the call of duty to do her job at a level that others are incapable of.
The hurt and pain my mom is feeling is understandable, at least for me.