Cobb

She told me jokingly on Tuesday night that if she needed chemotherapy that the honor would come to me to pre-emptively shave her head. She wouldn't have hair just falling out. It's a perfect sentiment from Moms, she's got guts. So I figured I could come up with something to make the worst-case scenarios lighter, and the idea struck me. A skull.

We could call it Mort and sit him next to her bed. Anytime we weren't around and she was feeling low, she could look over at Mort. Relatively speaking, she'd been in a lot better shape than Mort who has no eyes, no friends - literally nobody. The very idea cracked me up. It made me laugh hard enough to pick my ass up and head over to the hospital. Except human skull replicas cost $150 at skullsunlimited.com. Maybe I could get one cheap from a UCLA medical student.

When I got to her stall, Sister was sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed, Pops was kicked back casually and one of Force Ten (the grandchildren) was there as well. The mood was light. Good. I joked that we weren't all singing Kumbaya. I have to be in a joking mood, it's the mood I want to be in.

So we talked around her. I think maybe it's best that she just see us talking. Sometimes the subject would get to her specifically, but ever since she had her blood transfusion, she's been feeling better than she has in a long while. She only complains about the regular poking and vital signs checks every half hour 24/7.

An orderly came to fetch Moms for another scan downstairs. So Pops took off, and Sister and her daughter went across the street to get some pie. Moms was back within 15 minutes and then shortly thereafter my brother 'Doc' arrived. Doc was all business, and got the doctor to give us the factual rundown. Dutz returned with pies but no milk and we all had a little picnic.

Dr. C says Moms will probably be released as the oncologist assigned to her reviews all the cultures and stains and bloodwork and such to try and determine how far in the body the malignancy has spread. Hopefully not far. This is called staging the cancer. I may have heard her say early, but of course that's just what I want to hear. Her best guess, not even knowing how big the malignancy is, is that it started in her right kidney and moved to her liver. How quickly is part of the great calculation. The cancer's aggressiveness will be characterized.

She expects that the polyp removed just after Wednesday's colonoscopy will be shown to be benign. Just another bump in the series of bumps expected of 67 year old women. But that's small comfort considering the big meeting to come in a week or so. We'll sit and hear it. "Give it to me straight doc, how long have I got to live?".

Just the facts are annoying, and I'm facing a strange array of ethical dilemmas in dealing with such matters of mortality, spirituality and economics. But I will meditate on those under separate cover. In the meantime, I'm staring at my mother a great deal more than usual and trying not to think of her or our family in any other tense but the present. Demons are lurking. Hope is ever present. Strength and humor are in evidence. Time ticks into the future.