Tomorrow

Tomorrow begins the first day of orientation at my new school, which marks the end of the summer. I did not expect my summer to be like this.

The move was as smooth as possible, other than the burglary. My triathlon training was pretty successful, though uneventful.

What really changed my summer was my family, in so many ways.

Fourteen weeks ago, my grandmother wasn't feeling well. We took her to the hospital, which began a whirlwind of chaos and family and tears that, though ending imminently, is still dragging out.

This summer I learned a lot about a lot of things. I learned about brain cancer, especially the worst kind of brain cancer. Did you know there is a "worst" kind of brain cancer? Stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme. It's bad, it's incurable, it's fast-growing. The best treatments can extend the life of an otherwise healthy adult another 13 months, on average. In a best case scenario.

This was not a best case scenario. On my grandmother's 80th birthday, she underwent brain surgery, which removed 60% of the tumor. The rest couldn't be removed because it rested on her brain stem, the organ that controls the most vital functions.

We had hoped the surgery would return my grandmother to herself, her old personality, if only briefly. It did not, and we've spent the last 10 weeks watching her feisty personality fade away into that of a bland, elderly, woman, and eventually disappear completely. We would visit her, hold her, talk to her, looking for any glimmer of that unspoken brilliance, anything. And slowly, it disappeared. She stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped opening her eyes.

The whole process has worn hard on me, harder on my family. It has brought us together, for dinner every Friday and other nights as well. We lean on each other, make each other laugh and smile in a way we never did. We hug and we talk and we release our stresses. We sit around and joke and cry and plan.

This summer was the longest of my life. Every week, we watched as my grandmother progressed more and more into nothingness. Slowly. Each week was worse than before. Each week was slower than the last, with the sleep debt building for each of us, the tension growing, as my grandmother's health declined slower and faster than we ever could have imagined. Each week was the new beginning of the end. The beginning of the new end. We eagerly awaited the end and bitterly feared the end.

And I don't think she's in there, I don't think it's been her for a long time.

I think last Friday marked the real beginning of the real end, or so we think. She had a seizure and sunk into a coma. It was imminent, or so we thought/hoped/feared as we sat by her bedside for the last 48 hours. And still, it got even worse. More family joined us. Her kidneys failed and her liver failed and her breathing slowed.

But still, she breathes. The longest weekend turned into the longest Sunday, and it is still not over. Everybody says soon, tonight, or tomorrow. Or the next day. Or not.

I will go to work tomorrow, hoping and fearing the end, but mostly imagining what she would have been like as a teacher at North Star Academy.