Our Favorite Bones

I suppose I should probably elaborate a tad more on Beth's previous post.

If you didn't know, a few years ago my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I actually came back during college to kind of hold down the fort until it seemed like the coast was clear, or at least until Beth and I got to talking and I decided it was time to get back to California.

Over the past few months my mom's progress was declining, and although she managed to get to the beach this summer with some friends, over the past week her condition has suddenly worsened.

The general consensus is that the cancer has spread to her brain. Her speech is very slurred, eyes very droopy, and her overall presence is very thin. She often wonders why my dad is giving her two pills, when in fact she's only seeing double.

A few nights ago she complained to my sister about a woman in a red sweater sitting next to her. When my sister asked whether the sweater was too red or too bright my mother simply stated that it was 102 degrees in DC and there's no need for one. She then concluded, "and of course, she isn't real is she?" The woman in fact, wasn't. Apparently hallucinations are part of the mix now too.

I'm not sure how many days she has left. It just doesn't seem quite right (and we can't really afford) to fly out here to D.C. now, head back later, and then come back out again for a funeral. Seeing as my only means of support is a gig at 7 Eleven, and with the amount of time being taken off severely cutting down that support to afford rent and toilet paper, we've been thinking that my job status is up for revision again. It's a possibility, and probably an immanent reality (as in this week), that we'll be moving to DC for a little while to support my family and find jobs in a place that we want to be. Preferably where you are.

And that kind of sucks. We love our little apartment and are racking our brains with ways to return all of our most precious belongings (which by this point we've narrowed down to just Georgie Fruit and our mattress) back to Visalia.

That said, we still love Portland. We miss you guys. A lot. We want all of us to live in the same apartment building and be best friends. Please pray that we can make that a reality, or at least make a good home for ourselves in a decent place. And for my mom. Things are hard.