Diary from a Cancer Ward: Just a Mother

Pat’s Journal

 6/21/85 continued

          I’m so alone. Cut off. The world continues to spin on course outside of my daughter’s window. I can see it, but cannot reach it. A glass jar has dropped down to contain us. We can see out, but we cannot get out.

          The air inside grows thin. I have to find a way out soon, or we will die.  

  From the woods behind our house

          It is now late into the night and everyone else is sound asleep. I have been sitting on Heidi’s bed since the latter part of the evening – and praying. Only the rows of stuffed animals that line the walls and cover the bed almost burying the sleeping child, keep me company. The wind blows through the window, gently moving the Holly-Hobbie curtains. Light from the street lamp filters in and softly illuminates the lavender walls.

          Heidi has not once stirred, nor asked why I am here. Her swollen face sinks heavily into the pillow and she does not move with the normal movements of a sleeping child. Instead, she lay there stone-like. Coma-like.

          I pray with every ounce of strength and longing that I can pull up. I reach further and further down until I can reach no farther, for that is all I can do. I am not a doctor. I am not a surgeon.

          I am only a mother.

          So, I pray…

…for what else is left for me to do?