Scared

Today I drove my parents to my mom’s second radiology appointment – the CT scan & mask making appointment.

As we were sitting in the waiting room, my mom looked at us and said, with tears running down her face, “I don’t want to do this. I’m scared.” She sounded so helpless.

So there we sat, in the waiting room, all of us with tears running down our faces. We must have looked so ridiculous, my dad in his scooter, with his cane and his eyepatch covering the eye he just had surgery on, my mom in her wheelchair, in workout clothes, and with a patch of hair that’s shorter and greyer than the rest, from where they shaved her head for her surgery. And all of us crying, and then holding hands, praying together.

It’s really hard to hear your mom say, through tears, “I’m scared.” It’s even harder when she speaks with her slurred words, and looks as innocent and as honest as a little child. I’m glad she told us, and I’m glad I got to be there with her. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

She decided to still go through with the CT scan and the mask, even though we assured her that if she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to. She seemed in better spirits for the rest of the day, after it was over.

But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget that child-like-ness, or that fear, or those tears. I wish I could protect from the pain, as much as she protected me from pain when I was a kid.

Maybe this will just be our weird, somewhat morbid version of Freak Friday.