About reading people's correspondance

My mother can't carry things. She can't cut, slice or dice; she can't do anything that could get her arm infected, since her operation removed lymph nodes as well as her breast. So now that she's organizing major remodelling in our Paris apartment, I've pitched in a little. We have a second floor which is half a very beautiful room, which used to be mine but will soon be my sister's since I'm moving to Lyon soon, and a large workshop where an artist friend of my mother's used to work. Now this space will be converted into a guest bathroom, bedroom, living room and the terrace will be refurbished as well. It's exciting to say the least, and I know my mother gets a lot of comfort out of the idea she is turning a new leaf after her parents' death.

Now a lot of this workshop was used to store shit. There is no other words. Piles, and piles, and piles of books we don't read or haven't reread in years (I'm talking in the hundreds here), dusty carpets and my father's stuff from the year my parents moved into this apartment together, in 1988. Yes, he hasn't opened these boxes in more than 20 years. Since he is still in the hospital, my mother and I decided to go through it so the workers could do the work next week.

My father is "an old father", being fifteen years older than my mother, and I haven't known him for most of his life. I'm always surprised when I see pictures of the young, handsome English chap and compare them mentally to the broken-down invalid I visit twice a week. I know they are the same person. It just doesn't feel that way.

Seeing all the boxes on the floor, all his life, now restricted to a hospital room, made me very sad. And when my mother started reading his private correspondance and getting angry at what she was finding, I was very depressed as well.

I don't like thinking about my things being opened after I'm gone, whether to the hospital or dead. I'm thinking about entrusting my web codes to a good friend so she can erase every account, every mail, every blog post. I never want my parents, family or friends to discover the random annoyance I may have felt at some point, the rants, the anger, the pissiness. People get on our nerves without negating the love we have for them.

Sometimes I'm at my boyfriend's apartment, and he's left his computer on. I could log on to Firefox and read his gmail account. Does he write about me sometimes? Does he complain? I read my ex's diary when I was convinced he was cheating on me and I regret this deeply. Not only did I violate his privacy, nothing I learned in there help me process the breakup or even his new relationship. All I read was bitterness, which is not illogical since the fellow was falling out of love with me and having to bear my unhappiness through cohabitation.

I can't lie. It can be tempting. But I won't.

Hospitals blow

My mother was dreading chemo.
I had forbidden her to read online forums, because I am WAY too used to the rather depressing state of mind they can elicite in you. She read them anyway, and everyday brought a new tale of woe from anonymous 36 on the WORST CANCER STORY website.

We didn't even know what kind of treatment she was going to undertake, and I already knew more about chemo side-effects than others, since I saw both my grandparents go through with it.

My mother called me up elated on Friday. The biopsy was OK, and the doctors saw that the tumor was unresponsive to chemo, so they are going to go with an operation and then radiotherapy. My mother told me gleefully that her tumor was just like her.
"UH?"
"Well, it doesn't want to do chemo."
"OK."
"Also it likes drastic measures."
"Right."
"This tumor is just like me."

My father had a really bad spell a few days ago and had to be hospitalized in intensive care again. I'm going to see the doctors today during my lunch break, but reports differ: some people tell me he's doing oK, others seem to think he is very weak. Tracheotomy is an option. Anyway, my mother was telling me about her operation, which is in two weeks, and will require a lot of after-care. A nurse will help me at home, but it will be a lot of cooking, hand-holding etc. I have planned to have family and friends help, but still.

My mother and I chat together, thinking about how it will work out. Then she thoughtfully says:
"I do hope your father won't get worse and worse while I'm recuperating post-op. Then what will you do?"

I still miss my sister a lot. It would be so much funnier to have her around, since she is funny funny .

I may start reading forums for people who hate hospitals.

The twisted road

I was finding it hard to write here. My computer got hauled off to undergo repairs. I'm trying to find a way to get my father in a retirement home, against his will pretty much, which does not make you feel like daughter of the year. I would look at my last entries: death, depression. It would make me say that as soon as I had something funny to write, I would do it. But I realize I have to make a habit of it. Because the strange turn of events making 2010/2011 a bad, bad time for my family has just continued impressing me with its motivational anger.

My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. DISCLAIMER: It's breast cancer, the most easily taken care of cancer, she's in good hands, it seems that she is OK, it's going to be chemo and an operation and all that, but the doctors have so far been optimistic and kind.

I'm so scared of not being up to the challenge. I sometimes resent the fact my father is always at the hospital or sick. I look at him and think that I want to be alone, not talk to him and have to watch him so diminished. Now my mother is going to be weakened and exhausted and I'm afraid of resenting it in the same way.

Also I feel so guilty all the time. Guilty that I'm trying to put my father in a retirement home because it is hard to care for him, but also because I have so much work and a part of me can just forget. Yes, both my grandparents died in the last six months, my father is still in the hospital and my mother has cancer, but in the end, I think I could get into the mindspace that this is normal. After all, I'm used to being worried.

The worst part of all is thinking about my sister. J and I are incredibly close. We have our own lives, but when things go bad we immediately start working together.
J is in America, miles away, and has to "enjoy" her last college semester while scouting for jobs, knowing that everyone is sick at home...And yet I want to rely on her. I want her support too.

This to say that I have given up on writing when things go well at the moment. This place is a shelter for me, and I need to accept that life can go twisted and dark, and that it doesn't make my blog "boring".

So we all go down the twisted road. I hope I'm a good traveller.