I awoke with a smile on my face that morning. I stretched with feline laziness before rolling effortlessly from the bed. I disengaged the alarm before it had a chance to sound and tip-toed up the stairs to the bathroom. It was four in the morning, and I was the only housemate awake. I gingerly fought with the microwave door to open soundlessly as I prepared blueberry oatmeal, and settled down to my laptop to sip my coffee and write: it was peace.

It is gone now, my peace. That morning, two weeks ago, was the very last time that life felt right.

"It's just so ironic," I told Mom last night as I prepared to face the desolate corridors of my dreams. "I felt like my life was well oiled when this happened...I felt like things were finally clicking into place. I felt secure and happy. I liked my morning schedule and it set the tone for so many happy days."

"So get back to your morning schedule."

I try. I get up and force myself to drink coffee. I keep thinking, "C'mon...you love coffee! Have another cup! Another! Another!" I finish the pot of decaf every morning and wonder what to do next. I try to convince myself that my hyper optimism hasn't gone on sabbatical. I open to a blank page in my journal to write, and I can't stand to see the words that flow when I raise the dam. I'm not ready with the sandbags yet. I update this website, and I find it easier to relay conversations or commercials than to admit that I'm struggling, faltering.

Mom knows. Mom knows and she says, "Maybe the test of your strength is going to be to find humor in life even while it's caving in around you." I feel like I'm hovering over the side of a cliff, and my hands are bruised and busted as they cling to the jagged blades of rock. It hurts to be where I am right now. It's going to hurt a lot more if it's ever going to get better, if I ever get the urge to climb back up.

Perhaps I will need to force that urge. "C'mon...you love the joy of life! Have another look at its beauty! Another! Another!" And, hopefully, the pot will not empty, and I will have no reason to stop. I know the path, but I struggle to comprehend the way.

I put the car in reverse and looked over my shoulder as I began to hit the gas. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother assume her nauseated pose, with shoulders hunched and head hung low. She reached for her car's supply of small garbage bags, having been placed there for just such a purpose.

I drove home carefully, mindful of bumps in the road, and praying that once she was home, in bed, the feeling would subside. We carried in groceries, Mom stubbornly carrying in too much, and set them on the long chest freezer just inside the door. She braced a palm against the unit and steadied herself. With my mother's typical calm, she shrugged out of her coat and let it fall to the floor saying, "I have to hang that up, but first I feel like I'm going to faint unless I lie down."

The proclamation left me shaking my head in wonder of her strength, and I hung her coat in the closet while she traipsed to her bed. I put away groceries and washed the grapes—the grapes my mother hesitated to get for me because last time she did I ate them in rapid succession all the way through and threw up for what seemed like an hour straight. My stomach is still muttering with it's arrogant bully's Brooklyn cabbie's accent, "...friggin' idiot..."

I took off my own coat and put it away before going to Mom, seeing what she needed, what she wanted me to do. I discovered her on the bed in tears. I knelt at her side and she cried, "I hate that I waste my days with you, feeling like this." I loosened her shoelaces and removed her shoes. She stood, crying still, and said, "I don't know how many days I have with you, I don't want them wasted, I want to be strong for you. I don't want this to be what you remember."

"You are strong for me," I told her. "And you're beautiful to me, everything about you is beautiful, even this. You're fighting by tooth and nail, and it's glorious." We embraced and she continued to cry.

"At least we can be here for each other," she said as I folded down the bedding. She climbed between the sheets and I nodded.

Wasted days...I don't think so. There is no time with my mother that I would dare throw away.

Seeing a situation through someone else's interpretation can be powerful. It can give you an insight that rocks you from your base and leaves you a little unsettled for all the moments following.

As I made mention of in another post, Mom hugged a stranger as we left the cancer wing of the hospital the other day. The woman looked so sad, so fragile, as she came through the bathroom door. Mom stopped mid-sentence and turned to her, asking, "Do you need a hug?"

The woman welcomed Mom's embrace. Mom said she held on with such strength and sobbed a sob that seemed to come straight from her soul before running back to the bathroom. We relayed the story to our pastor today, and he got chills.

"Wow," he said, clearly moved. "In that moment, you were Christ. You were that woman's Christ. God used you as his vessel. You were Christ."

Last night a friend tried to talk me out of the void. Unfortunately, I wasn't a receptive audience.

So many heart trembling moments have come to pass in just the last day. Mom couldn't receive her chemotherapy yesterday because of elevated blood glucose levels. We go back today, after she's fasted, to try the blood test again, hopefully receiving more positive results. I felt regret yesterday, a dull throb of pain in the center of my chest.

On the walk back from the cancer ward, a woman exited the bathroom and looked like she was trembling on the edge of tears. Mom, who was talking to Charlie and me, stopped mid-sentence and approached the woman asking, "Do you need a hug?" They embraced and the woman sobbed and mom crooned, "It'll be ok." I felt more of that dull ache in my chest.

This morning, I stumbled weakly from bed to discover that my brother shaved his head in support of Mom. Where, at one time, tears would have welled, I, again, felt only that ache, only that pulsing echo of emptiness. It is as though I have lost my ability to react, leastwise noticeably. In the last several days, I have become a shell.

I'm dried up. How long before it reaches my soul?

I readied myself for church this morning; I skipped it last week. As I stared at the ceiling last night and begged God's mercy, I wondered if I'd be able to do it today. As I pulled on a crisp pair of trousers and a tidy shirt, I felt guilty for not looking like a bum. A few swishes with the makeup brushes and I was sickened to see that I could still look normal with all of the turmoil within.

One day last week, I couldn't figure out how to snap my brassiere. It wasn't a new undergarment, just a new ache stripping me of competence. My mother had to do it for me, commenting on my hollowed abdomen, my prominent rib cage. "You've lost weight in the last several days. Maybe we need to get you some of those Ensure nutrition drinks. That's what a lot of chemotherapy patients drink when food won't stay down."

The task of brushing my hair seems insurmountable. I could waste hours standing in my underwear, staring at clothing, completely inept at choosing something to don. I feel pain coursing through me...actual, physical pain. My chest aches continually, my stomach cramps. I feel like crying against the misery, but am too dehydrated between the stomach issues and the tears already shed. My soul screams in agony to be so sad and be so disabled in expression.

So, I will go to church today and pray for absolution from my selfish thoughts, pray for strength, pray for patience, and pray for hope. I pray for answers and I pray for effort. I pray for an unbroken promise.

And, I pray for the will to survive.