Tonight was laundry night. Nothing exciting. My mom was scheduled to have her 3rd chemo treatment today. I was really nervous, as the last time she ended up in the hospital for a week. I tried to call her after work, but didn't get an answer.
So as I was folding clothes, my phone rang. The caller id said it was my moms house. Expecting it to be my step-dad, calling to give me a chemo update, I answered with my usual "hey-low". My moms voice, on the other end, replied with "what are you doing?" Even as I typed that, I could hear my moms voice in my head. I lost my breath for a moment.
Back in January, my mom started losing her voice. It was her first "outside" symptom. The first one I noticed. You don't realize how comforting someones voice is, until it isn't there. I've blogged before about how I would give anything to hear her voice just one more time. You can read that entry here: You will never get it...
I've been thinking a lot lately, about things my mom has said to me over the years, that I would give my right arm to hear again, in her voice. Her calling me "toots". Her saying orange, only pronouncing it "oinge". Her saying "Hi, this is Jackie. Greg and I aren't home right now. If you want to leave a message....do it now".
And today, when she said "what are you doing?", I got a little glimpse of that. I know she needs to rest. I know she hasn't had a voice in a LONG time, and it probably exhausted her to speak even a little, so I couldn't bring myself to ask her to say all of the things I wanted to hear her say just one more time. But you can be assured, I DID tell her to hurry up and re-record that answering machine greeting!
And just as a quick treatment update, they didn't do chemo today. They instead chose to drain the fluid out of her lung. She said they got about 2 mason jars full of fluid out. Unfortunately, the woman that did it was NOT very nice, and caused my mom a LOT of pain. But the rest of her day went very well, and she sounded AMAZING!
Mom, if you happen to be reading this, I'm serious....fix the damn answering machine!
