[the Writing of Kuypers]
We went to see my mother this weekend. You see,
The night before i couldn’t bring myself to pack. it was
i kept telling people at work, “well, you see, I have to go
In fact, when my sister told me the diagnosis, it
that I managed to postpone even thinking about it until
It shouldn’t be this way, and I knew that, I knew that I
But I wasn’t supposed to think that way, things would be
So I finished packing at four in the morning and the next
and everyone was so happy to see each other, it was
and the sisters and dad walked into the front room to
so I suddenly became serious and sat down next to her
[JanetKuypers.com][Bio][Poems][Prose]
My motherMy motherMy mother
my mother has cancer, and we decided to go
across the country for a weekend to surprise her
and see how she was doing. it was breast cancer,
so it really was the best case scenario, i suppose,
so i managed to put it out of my mind until we actually
had to fly there
two in the morning when i finally pulled my suitcase out
from the pantry shelf.
visit my mother because she has cancer, so I have to
miss a few days of work,” but I was always able to
say it so matter-of-factly until I had to actually
visit her
was right around Christmas time, and there was so much
work to do and I still had presents to wrap and a
meal to prepare and Christmas was supposed to be a
happy time
we all decided to surprise her for a visit. And then I
had to pack. To decide what to take, what to leave
behind, put my life into a little black box with a handle
and wheels, and go
shouldn’t be visiting my mother under these circumstances
and I knew how she never wants to think about bad things
because they always make her cry and this would make her
want to cry and cry because the only reason why we’re
there is because things are bad
just fine.
thing I remember is I was on the plane with my sisters,
cracking jokes as we picked up the rental car. and then we
got to mom and dad’s house
one big family reunion and we were laughing and talking
and trying to figure out where we were all going
to sleep
see if the couches were good enough to sleep on or if we
would have to get out an air mattress and I was alone
in the den with mom
and asked her how she was really doing. And that is when
she started to cry, saying that the cancer spread, but
what she was most concerned with was the fact that she
didn’t want to spoil the time that we came to visit her.
But what I don’t think she understood was that we couldn’t
have come at a better time, and nothing she could do would
spoil our trip.
Copyright Janet Kuypers.
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