Dear mother...

I saw mum on skype today. I asked to. Was I prepared to? I don't know. The first image stunned me. That is my mother. My own dear mother on that screen... The same mother who raised me, who cleaned up after me, who scolded me when I was naughty, who stroked my head when I was good... the same mother who I cleaned up after until a few weeks ago, whom I scolded because I was frustrated and did not know how to deal with my emotions, the same mother whose skin I massaged in attempts to take away her physical pain, take away her emotional pain...

I cannot believe how thin she has become.
Her arm was just bone. It was not an arm, just a bone with yellowish skin. Her eyes bulged, her cheeks sunk deep into her skeletal structure. And yet she spoke like my mother, like the mother I have always known, like the mother I will also love and treasure no matter what... No matter how the cancer eats her up and no matter how the cancer finishes her off.

Dear mother, how seeing you is making me cry. How seeing you in this state is making me cry so much, even though I thought I was all cried out...