Kanye West, Late Registration, Track 16
The accusation of being self involved isn’t a new one to me. Looking to the past events of my life I have always put myself before others. I guess that is just part of my personality at this point. It isn’t something that I am particularly proud of, but it is something that I learned to accept. It is also amazing to me just what, especially at a young age, your mind can decide what is too painful to store and pushes those memories deep deep down, where, in my opinion, they should stay.
Regardless, when I was in fourth grade my dad walked into my bedroom one night and told me that my mom was pretty sick and needed to go stay at the hospital for a few days in order to get better. I don’t know why that didn’t seem out of place to me at the time. No clue. But again, there I am, even at the age of 10, self involved to the point that I am focused only on beating that next level on the video game that I don’t even think to be more inquisitive to what is wrong. To me, that is how hospitals worked. You get sick, you go, you get better, and you go home. I didn’t even think it was strange when my aunt, my mother’s sister showed up to stay with us. To me, in my world, it just seemed like a convenient time for her to be here. I had no clue what was going on.
A few days later I visited her in the hospital and that’s when things got difficult for me. My dad told me that she was very tired so if she didn’t seem like the same kind of person that I am used to not to be alarmed. He told me not to touch her because she might be sore from some of the tests that the doctors had performed on her. I still can smell that hospital room in my memories. It is awful. It is one of those smells that makes your throat swell shut, either from the stench itself or from the tears it brings back. Those tears crashing from the inner depths of your memories right up front. A tsunami of grief that has been lying in wait for just the right mix of odors to come back. Walking into that room, smelling that awful smell, seeing pipes, fluids, machines, monitors all attached to her, I immediately new I should have paid more attention to what my dad was saying. All of a sudden the visiting rules were banging in my ears. Don’t touch, be quiet, and tell her you love her.
She kept calling me Jason. That’s my older brother’s name. She told me there were small leprechauns in the corner that had just gotten married. She told me that there was an angel that would sit in the chair next to her each night and hold her hand. She said the wings were the whitest thing she had ever seen. Well in all fairness she told me that the angel was whiter than the leprechaun bride’s dress, but I guess when you are stoned out of your mind on pain medication that is about the same thing.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother had just had her right breast removed. She had been struggling with breast cancer for a couple of months and the decision had been made to remove her breast before the cancer could spread. As an adult now, I realize how long this process must have been to come to this conclusion and I knew nothing about it. Literally at this point, all I knew was that my mother was seeing mythological Irish creatures in her room and that she thought I was my brother. I hadn’t been part of the process at all. There must have been weeks of doctors appointments, second opinions, preparation for the surgery. All of this being done to my mom and I was shut out.
I remember her coming home and being locked in her room for days. I wasn’t allowed to see her. I would catch glimpses of my dad or my aunt walking out with bloody bandages at times. I remember hearing her cry at night. If ever there is something worse in this world than falling asleep to your own tears, it is falling asleep to the sound of your mothers.
There were people constantly dropping by with dinners. Our freezer was full of food. My dad told me no matter what, even if I didn’t like the food, I had to thank the person for giving it to us. I’ll never forget that my 5th grade teacher brought us a spinach casserole that stunk to high hell. I had to thank her for this crap? Fuck that, I thought, I can remember her asking me how my mother was doing and I had to fight the urge to tell her that her nasty ass dinner had made her sicker. It wouldn’t have been a good joke at the time, but let’s be honest, when in my life, has the prospect of making a bad joke ever stopped me from making it. I guess I had more discretion when I was younger.
Two years later my mother had her second breast removed. She had reconstructive surgery this time and I could over hear her bragging to her friends that she was getting two tattoos after the surgery. The tattoos were new nipples. Cancer might have taken her breasts, but she was going to keep her femininity. To this day, I have never met a more amazing woman in my life than my mother. She has lived through 3 marriages, breast cancer, working in child protection for the State of Louisiana, and being a widow. Not to mention raising 3 sons and a daughter who have never been appreciative of everything she has given to us.