January Vignette
Reflecting on this time(ish) last year...
Our mom laid a towel down on the floor of the bathtub before Sonny got in. He needed the extra padding to protect his bony body from the hard surface.
Sonny inched his IV pole into the bathroom—push, left foot, right foot; push, left foot, right foot. Walking was getting hard. Food came from a tube. The start of a new year meant nothing to us now.
Our mom cut another t-shirt off his body and slid it around the wires. We slowly helped him lower into the tub for his twelfth bath of the day. His tailbone was in so much pain he couldn’t sit in one position for too long, so the baths were quick but frequent. It was the only thing that provided any sort of relief. We wouldn’t learn for another ten days that this tailbone pain was being caused by a new tumor. But even still, it was like we knew. Something was wrong. The cancer. The tumors. The fear. The helplessness. They all became characters in our life—silent in certain rooms and screaming in others.
Sonny kept his shorts on in the tub so we could hang out.
“Stop tryna sneak a peek—” he would say to our mom.
“I made you,” she would remind him.
When she left the bathroom, I could hear the rustling of the bedsheets almost immediately outside the door. Each time he left the bed, she made it fresh for him. Anytime we were sick growing up, our mom would make us what she called a “sick bed.” A sick bed was made by stretching a fitted sheet over the couch and layering it with all different types of blankets. I thought about those sick beds as she made his hospital bed. Our mom used to be able to do so much for us when we were sick, and now, here, she could do almost nothing. All she could do was make the bed and run the bath, and still, nothing would work.
I sat curled in a ball on top of the toilet seat.
“You got the penjamin?” Sonny raised his eyebrows at me.
I presented the vape to him like a gift from the cancer gods themselves—which, for a sixteen-year-old, weed you didn’t have to hide from your parents was.
“Do you think you’re the first kid to smoke weed on the third floor at CHOP?” I asked him.
He took a big hit—a “blinker,” he taught me—and stifled a cough as the smoke poured out of his mouth. I waved my hands in the air, encouraging the smoke toward the ceiling vent. A smile that I’d recently discovered looked like mine spread across his face.
“You scared?” he mocked me.
But somehow, in that moment, I wasn’t scared. I was just grateful he didn’t have lung cancer, though now I wonder if maybe that wouldn’t have killed him as quickly.
Happy New Year1
It’s okay if nothing changes. Sameness is wonderful too.
Lylas2,
Somebody’s Sister
Yeah, yeah, it’s the 14th, I know.
Love you like a sister
sameness can be wonderful because erin made the bedsheets new
💙