On Thursday, between work at one of my on-campus jobs and my one class of the day, I received a message from my doctor following up on a routine mammogram. I would need to make another appointment with the imaging center, because they needed “additional views in one area of the right breast,” but “not to worry,” because it is “almost always… OK.”
I called before looking at the radiology report.
“You’ll need to block out two hours for this appointment,” the receptionist said. “First you’ll have a mammogram, then an ultrasound, and then the radiologist will meet with you to go over the results.”
The first available appointment was this coming Tuesday, but I turned it down because it conflicted with class. (Nothing like divinity school attendance policies that seem to anticipate that prospective ministers are robots, unlike their very human flock. It seemed to me too soon to miss a class. The semester has just started. I should wait to ask for grace until I know I really need it.) The second available was on my birthday and, again, in the middle of class. Two strikes against it. I settled, instead, for an appointment a few weeks from now and ended the call.
And then I read the radiology report: “A possible developing asymmetry is seen in the retroareolar aspect of the right breast.”
Possible.
Developing.
Asymmetry.
I Googled this and then went to class. And then thought about it. And then walked back out of class in the middle of the TA explaining an important assignment.
“I called earlier to schedule an appointment and was wondering if the two earlier appointments are still available.”
“I’m sorry; they’ve already been taken.”
This morning, feeling tugged into the woods, I took myself for a hike. As my feet hit the trail, one of those realizations that never quite comes until I free myself to notice it hit me. I wished my mom were here.
Yesterday was two years since she went into hospice. She died a week later.
And on the trail I wished she were here. I wished she were here more deeply than I have in the two years since she passed. A realization and admission that is difficult to state openly. And yet, here it was.
If the possible is actually a definite.
I wish she were here.
With me.
For me.
I want my mom here.
It didn’t take long for the rational to try to overtake this impulse. This longing. Though she did a lovely job caring for me and my brother when we were ill, my mother wasn’t always the best under crisis. Not with her kids. She earned her PhD in fretting. The what-ifs around all of this would likely have driven her to madness (or something close to it).
No, better that she not be here if the possible is definite. It would be too much for her to bear. And her too much would be too much for me.
But grief isn’t rational.
That bit in the core, that tiny, vulnerable bit that faces a primal fear and wants its mother, that part transcends the rational.
It just is.
As I climbed further along the winding path, I stumbled across a side trail with a sign that read “Quiet Point.” This trail terminated in a clearing with a small bench facing a circle of trees.
Entering its sanctuary, I sat on the bench, placed both feet on the ground, took a deep breath and wept.
kfw 2023
Undusted Corners 