Torment

"I have never felt like this in all my life..." mum said. She looked terribly weak, terribly shaken. Another vomiting session, three, four throw ups in one go, brown liquid pouring out of her mouth into the see through plastic bag I just managed to hand her. It pains me, it really pains me so! I lay down next to her an patted her back, her thin, bony back. I felt her ribs on the side of her body, I felt her shoulder blades, I felt her spine... I felt such pain, such terrible anguish seeing mum suffer again and again.

Five times vomiting today. It seems to be getting worse, though the first few days in hospital it seemed to be getting better. Now, even shots that are supposes to prevent vomiting, which are painfully jabbed into the muscles, do not work. Tonight and last night, mum vomited all the same, yesterday even within five minutes of having the needle stuck into her arm, even barely before the blood has dried...

"What is the meaning of living is this is the way it is?" I asked rhetorically. I know, in this moment when death is lurking so close by, and just before an attempt is made to insert a tube into mum's nose so she can at least sustain her life and her body for just a bit longer, what I said was perhaps cruel and unfeeling. But I suspect that mum feels the same sentiments, or otherwise she would not say that all her life she's never been through something as terrible as what she is going through now...

What is the purpose of all this? All this pain, discomfort, all these sores and mental anguish at seeing your body decline and decline? What lesson is mum supposed to get out of all this suffering if anything? Six years of being sick, six years of treatment and getting even sicker from treatment, and now surgery, now being robbed of the ability to eat and drink

[as I was typing this, mum made a gargling noise, and I knew she was going to throw up again. Six times today! Six times!!!]

What is the purpose of all this suffering? What is the purpose of living at all if all you will get is sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker? I am hurting and crying so badly inside... So badly deep inside...

Oh, cancer! How you torment my dear, brave mother so! Oh, damned cancer! How you cause her so much pain and suffering and do not seem to want to stop anytime soon! Cancer, you are taking my mum away, bit by bit, you are making her so weak, so thin, so very sick... Are you happy now? Have you fulfilled your mission yet, or is your final object to torture her till she dies?

Well, when she dies, you will too...