The Things We Cannot Say

Is nobody going to say it?

But I’m not brave enough to let the words pounding in my head cross my lips. My mom puffs on her cigarette, oxygen cannulas shoved up

her nose, while her brand-new concentrator hums along with the cicadas. A month

in the hospital—four long touch and go weeks, one emergency surgery and the

words “stage four lung cancer.” 

Yet, here she sits, as if nothing has changed. Old habits die hard, I guess. Her nightgown hangs loose around her from the weight she lost during her hospital stay. She blames it on the quality of the food at the hospital, and not the cancer growing inside her. 

My sister says, “You look so good, mom,” as we crowd together on the back porch like it’s Christmas, all my siblings, dad and me. 

A breeze rustles through the muggy Tennessee evening, carrying away the acrid fumes from my face. A smell so intertwined with my childhood. A freshly lit cigarette always brings back glimpses of long summer days, my mom sitting poolside, while the lazy smoke drifted around us kids—so different from the sinister way it smells now. 

Everyone’s talking, desperate as a metronome to keep time from getting away from them—to keep themselves from unraveling—except for me. I sit quietly as the pain washes over me anew. Nothing is going to be the same. 

My brother makes a joke, something I hardly hear because I’m watching our mother smoke. After everything. Everything we went through, and she can’t give it up. Their raucous laughter fills the night until my mom coughs and chokes on sickness, the phlegm sounds dampening the mood for just a moment as she waves her hand, cigarette still burning between her fingers. “I’m fine—just choking on my own spit.” 

My jaw tightens. More lies. 

The silence stretches for just a moment as if man and machine were holding their breath and I think someone will say it, say what we need to say. I want to scream, “She’s dying and the thing responsible is in her hand, ready to ignite the oxygen she needs now because half her lung is so riddled with cancer she can’t breathe on her own.” 

But I don’t say anything. The anger beats its wings inside me until a single stubborn tear rolls down my cheek. My whole life she had been difficult and now she couldn’t take this one thing seriously. No. She had to treat it like one of her conspiracy theories. This cancer thing was just another trick from the devil, another scheme from the man to get her down. 

  Slowly, the chatter resumes, the glow of the cigarette catching the tears in everyone’s eyes, but no one says a thing.

Love makes cowards of us all. 

Weeks turn into months. My siblings return to their far-away homes, leaving me, always the one left behind to assist with the day-to-day care. Out of sight, out of mind, right? My dad and I trade whispers, but his denial is just as deep as hers. He buries himself in his work and I am alone in this, trying to save someone who doesn’t think she needs to be saved. 

She puts off scheduling doctors’ appointments and talks of

more trips to Mexico or maybe Europe this time. I smile and nod as she goes on

planning for days ahead. I don’t have the heart to tell her it may all be for

naught. So, I schedule her appointments and she begrudgingly goes along. 

She and my dad pick fights over mundane things like takeout

and how long it took him to go to the store. Their faces beg me to play

referee, the way they have done my whole life, and I think I will say something

now. Squash their pettiness with a hefty dose of reality. She could die

tomorrow, or in a few months, at most a year, but I bite my tongue as she puts

on some television preacher. The used car salesman looking wolf in sheep’s

clothing promises healing with a gift of just $777. 

She picks up her phone, her eyes wide as saucers as she says, “God will heal me.” I want to cry and tell her the God she believes in is a lie. That she doesn’t need him to save her, but for the doctors to do their best and for her to soak up whatever time she has left. But I can’t do it. I can’t crush the hope bringing color to her pale cheeks. So, she prepares her donation while I get her medicine. 

The next day we sit on the porch while she pretends to drink the coffee that doesn’t agree with her radiation. While puffing on her fourth cigarette of the morning, she delicately taps the ash into the tray.

There is something transcendent about it and I feel like I see a glimmer of the

young woman she had been before motherhood stole all of her plans. Her eyes grow distant, a slight turn in her mouth and I wonder if this moment is when it will sink in and we can grieve together, but the moment passes and she says, “Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.”

I bite my tongue, choking down the words until they fall into my stomach. 

Time blurs into going to chemo and immunotherapy, and we can’t forget about the radiation all while she continues to light up, though she’s shriveling away. And I think maybe it would be a mercy if her oxygen exploded because it would kill her to know that her god refused to save her. 

But still, I say nothing, because love makes me a coward. 

I make her a grilled cheese, sliced diagonally, with orange smiles fanned out neatly on the plate. The plate clinks on the tray table, in front of the couch that has become her bed. But she doesn’t wake up. I press a kiss to her forehead, remembering being small and sick, the one who got the grilled cheese and kisses, not the one who gives them. 

She stirs and sits up, frowning at the food. “I’m not hungry.” Then she falls back to sleep, not bothering to lie back down.  I take the plate; the raining of my tears makes the sandwich soggy. My phone buzzes and I slip it from my pocket. 

The group chat Just the Sibs pops up and anger sours my sadness. 

How’s she doing today? My sister texts and my brothers thumbs up her message as if saying yeah, we care too. And they do. I’m sure they all do, but they aren’t here. They don’t have to see her wasting away, but they’ll feed into her magical thinking that God is going to fix this all. So, I don’t answer. I leave the phone face down on the counter

and toss the soggy sandwich in the trash. 

“Honey?” my mom’s voice rasps and I leave my anger in the kitchen to see what she needs. Her ashen face is tear streaked as she pats the cushion for me to sit with her. I obey, though fear quivers in my body. My mom is never vulnerable but something in her eyes tells me she’s about to be. Her crepe-paper finger caresses mine. “You’re a good kid. You know that? Of all of my children, I knew you’d be the one to take care of

me. Thank you.” 

My throat tightens and I dig my teeth into the tip of my tongue to fight back the tears. “They would be here if they could,” I say, but I don’t mean it. 

She flashes a weak smile, both of us knowing it is a lie. 

Nearly seven months to the date of her first hospitalization, it happens—not the explosion, but her death. My dad and I stand opposite one another, bathed in fluorescent lights. The stench of commercial cleaners surrounds us. We stand speechless, our eyes fixed on her in the hospital bed. She doesn’t look like herself, all waxy skin and bones. There’s nothing left, none of the frustrating gaze that could pin you where you stood. No more raspy laughs or toothy smiles. The fight and the love had gone out of her.  

I want to say something about it. Scream that the corpse wasn’t her. That it was an imposter, but I knew the truth in the broken and red-rimmed stare of my father. 

No one thought we would be here but me.

My siblings return, each one acting as though they hadn’t seen this coming. Hugs are exchanged with words like, “I can’t believe she’s gone.” And I hate them for it. I hate that they left the burden of it all to me, but I say nothing. 

The funeral falls in a curtain of black. Pressed shirts and dark dresses. My mom is hidden in a box, covered in flowers beside a cloaked man of god offering fraudulent claims of comfort and peace. He encourages all those present to put money on the collection plate to ensure our dearly departed gets a good place in heaven. 

I just can’t take it anymore. The words that have been rotting inside me burst from my mouth in a scream before I can stop them. “Is nobody going to say it?” 

Heads snap in my direction, glossy eyes in solemn faces glare at me appalled by my outburst. My sister pinches me and mouths something through gritted teeth I can’t understand, my dad shakes his head, while my brothers look forward eyes widened like I’m the crazy one. The preacher clears his throat, and the service continues, as if nothing has happened.

I am too late and the weight of it finally breaks me.