Hearing my mom’s saying, I woke up at 3:30am. It was a first night to sleep next to my mom’s hospital bed. Mom’s fifth chemo began moving into the hospital and taking a series of tests and injections. The room of six beds is quiet because two beds are empty and four patients including my mom seem too weak to be jovial. Since I have taken my father’s role to be a caregiver, I basically stick to my mom all day: getting water, setting a prepared meal, asking a nurse what mom needs, etc. The most useful skill I have as a priest would be an ability to listen, not giving a cheap advice soon. A patient has many things to talk, including complaining about watery food, impersonal treatment and even sticky room temperature.
My understanding of cancer grows as well. The hardest thing is to watch the beloved one suffering from the uncontrolable desease. And another difficult thing could be the family’s responsibility to tell the truth to the patient. My mom keeps talking that she could finish the chemo by taking two more which is her six chemos. But her doctor assured me in private that my mom needed at least twelve chemos to get rid of a possible recurrance of cancer. How dare am I to tell her that she has not reached to the even half point yet! So I pray that one chemo at a time, asking God to give her strength to do well in her fifth chemo first.
Until Sr. Paul and my mom got cancer, I had been ignorant about being a cancer patient and being sick in general. To be honest, I believed that getting ill is mainly from sick persons’ fault not to take care of themselves. However, how many children I have seen today! Obviously they have no power to take care of themselves and no idea why they have to suffer. From the eyes of God, my mom and those who are sick are the children of God as well. We do not need to answer why this happens but to find how we could endure it.
It is my hope that my presence give my mom strength to endure the hardship of chemo and the terrible evil of cancer. It is a first day in the hospital, but I trust that it is also a day of noble endurance and a day of eternity in which all those who are sick could be well in body and mind.