Your 20s are your Freedom Years

It's currently 1:00 am on a warm Friday night. It's summertime and my high school friends are home for the summer.

Guess what I'm doing.

I'm sitting in bed, alone in my apartment. Just sitting here. Thinking "How in the world is my mom actually dying? Is this real?"

The answer is yes. Yes, it's real. Yes, she's dying. Yes, she actually looked my dad in the eyes today and said "Will you take me to the cemetary where my dad is buried? I want to choose a plot."

Raise your hand if witnessing your mom say this would make you feel at least mildly uncomfortable.

I hope your hand is in the air.

This is my college life. These are my young adult years. This is how I'm spending it.

I found this picture online the other day. I thought it was appropriate:

I'm only 20, but this could not be further from the truth for me, at least what I've been experiencing so far in my 20s.

When was the last time I was selfish? And I don't mean to say that in a way like I'm a selfless angel. I would love to be able to be selfish right now. I would love to be able to have a normal college life right now. To live in the dorms and go to parties on the weekend. To have the only stressful thing in my life be homework and midterms. To feel free.

That's really what your 20s are about. Your 20s may be your "selfish" years, but more impotantly, they're you "freedom" years.

I was given a taste of freedom for 3 months. Just 3 months, then it was ripped out of my chest, and it's never coming back. Now life is a series of responsibilities and obligations. And it's not like all of the responibilities/obligations I'm exepriencing are always being pushed on my by external forces. In fact, most of them are internal. I just feel like I have a responsilibity and obligation to be there for my mom. (So if my aunt could stop telling me things like "Good job Misha. You're being a good daughter today", I would really appreciate it.)

I was only in Chicago are 3 months, and it's been a year and a half since then, but I still can't even hear someone mention that city without my mind being flooded with just the pure awesomeness it felt like to be 2,000 miles away from home and having the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

So far, I've been relatively successful in blocking those thoughts out of my head. I have bigger things to think about now.

Sometimes I wish my mom could have gotten sick before I left for college. At least that way I would never have expereinced the freedom. I would have no idea what I was missing.

But I just have to learn to accept things for how they happened. No point dwelling on the past, right? I try not to, but the past sneaks into my thoughts from time to time.

I know, I know. It's been a year and a half, I should be used to it by now. But I can't get used to it. Because my number one question still hasn't been answered. And it will never be answered.

Why did this happen to my mom?

I hate brain cancer. There are absolutely no known causes of brain cancer. There's no way to prevent it.

I guess that could be seen as a positive. It's not like my mom wasn't being irresponible. In fact, she was quite the contrary. She was always one notch away from being a health nut. Two years ago, she'd be the last person in the world you'd expect to get stage four cancer.

But it happened to her.

I can't believe my mom is dying.

It's easy to say that she's dying of a disease, of cancer. But I like to think of it as Cancer is killing her. When I hear people say stuff like "he died of cancer", it sounds way too passive to me. The person didn't just die, something killed them. There's always a Cause of Death.

And when the Cause of Death is something like cancer, it's so interesting to think about. It's been a year and a half and my mom's cancer is still winning this fight againt modern medicine. It's obviously working very hard, because we're throwing everything we got at it. It's a persistant, motived, and diligent Cancer. Kind of how I describe myself in a job interview.

But when I'm applying for a job, I have a goal and benefits in mind. My goal is to get a job so that I can get paid (the benefits).

But when I think about cancer and how hard it works, I see absolutely no benefit that it could possibilty be getting from this expereince. What is Cancer's goal? Just to kill another kind-hearted humand being? What's the point? What benefit does Cancer get out of killing my mom?

Then & Now

I was fooling around with a new website called Qwiki and I decided to make a Qwiki video about my mom.

Please check it out and tell me what you think! Should I make more of these?

Play the Qwiki: Then & Now

"The End is Near"

My mom seems to be preparing for death. And it's freaking me out. Is it really that time yet? She's not in hospice care/palliative care yet. She's still in treatment! Currently taking 3 chemo drugs. Why is she doing this?

Maybe she knows that none of the chemo drugs are going to save her. Maybe she knows that the drugs may give her a few extra months, maybe just weeks. But as she told me the other day, "The end is near."

How near? I'm not sure. And I don't know if she knows how near it is either.

She's decided that she wants to plan her Memorial Service, or as she calls it, her "After Party."

She said, "My After Party. You know, after I'm dead and gone." Not exactly what you want to hear form your own mother.

She's come up with a plan on how to raise money for her After Party. There are two glass vases in my mom's room that she has named The Money Jars. Her rules are that if you cry in front of her, you have to put $1 in the Money Jar. And if you make her laugh (not an easy task because laughing takes so much energy for her), you have to put $5 in the other Money Jar.

The Money Jars

She's asked me to make sure that her After Party goes exactly how she wants it to go. She told me that she's worried that since she won't be around to make sure everything goes how she wants it, that no one's going to do it the way she wants. I reassured her that whatever she wants, she make it happen.

I asked her to write me a list of what she wants at her After Party. That was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to watch. It was a few hours after we had this talk and she was doodling in her sketchbook when she suddenly turned to a new page and started writing. That was too unusual. The part that caught my attention was that she was writing in English, not Farsi. Probably because she wanted me to be able to read it.

Unfortunately, her handwriting has become to tiny that I couldn't read what she was writing about. So I asked her to read it outloud to me.

"It says Step one: Guests arrive. Step Two: Someone reads my eulogy...."

At that point, I realized what she was doing. It was so heart-breaking. It was even more heart-breaking at this point because I realized that she had started writing her own eulogy! But even on top of that, her voice trailed off because she herself couldn't even read her own handwiriting. She couldn't read what she had just written seconds before!

It scared me so much. I'm so scared.

But my mom doesn't seem to be scared at all. She seems ready.

But I don't want her to be ready! I want her here!

We All Have Stupid Questions

Someone tweeted a blogpost today called "The Things I Wish I was Told when I was Diagnosed with Cancer" By Jeff Tomczek. (You can find it here.)

And while I can't entirely relate to everything he wrote, one of the things on the list really moved me. It says...

The people that love you will be just as scared as you are. Probably more. They will be worrying even when they are smiling. They will assume you are in more pain than you are. They will be thinking about you dying and preparing for life without you.

At this point, my mind started spinning:

"Wait. But I haven't thought about what life will be like when my mom's gone. Oh my god. What will that be like? ..... OH MY GOD."

Then I had a minor freak out.

Once that was over, I continued reading.

They will go through a process that you will never understand just like they will never understand the process you are going through. Let them process. Forgive them when they don’t understand. Exercise patience when you can. Know that those that were built for this will be there when you get to the other side and you will all be able to laugh together again. You’ll cry together too. Then you’ll get to a place where you will just live in the world again together and that is when you know that you have beaten this. 

I think Jeff has really got it figured out. That last sentence really got me. I want to get to that point so bad. Words can't even describe how bad I want that.

I have a stupid question for Jeff, does that happen for everyone? Or do some people never get to that point?

 

Summertime!

It's (almost) officially summer time and all of my high school friends are home from college. It's really nice to have them back in the Bay Area. It's nice to friends close by.

It's been two years since I've started college, but I have yet to make any close friends. When you're mom's dying, it's hard to make friends. Making friends is hard work! I can't be lively and personable all the time like I used to be. And I probably seem like my mind is elsewhere most of the time, because it is.

I wish my high school friends were always around. Going away to college is such a big milestone, and everyone seems to be enjoying it except for me. Everyone's having a blast and making tons of friends. And I'm just so grateful for when they come home.

The only problem is that I'm living in Oakland and they're all in Marin County, about a 45 minute drive away. And every time I go to Marin to hang out with my friends, my dad assumes I'm coming to take care of my mom so that he can have a break. I understand that he needs a break, I just want so bad to have some carefree time with my friends.

I just want to have fun again. It's so incredibly hard for me to let loose and have fun anymore. And being in Marin with my high school friends brings me back to high school times, back when cancer was affecting my life.

But my dad won't let me do that.


(Please don't get the idea that I don't want to visit my mom. I visit her about 3 times a week!)

Happy Memories Project

For the past week I've been vigorusly working on a new project for my mom. It's going to be a surprise present. It's not for any special occasion, just to make her happy.

About a month ago, my mom and I started a Happy Memories Journal. It's been going really well and it got me thinking. All of my mom's friends and family must have happy memories of my mom too.

So I came up with this project - the Happy Memories Project. I've contacted all of my mom's friends and relatives and asked them to send me a happy memory or story they have of my mom. I'm going to compile all of the stories into a book by using a program called Blurb. (Super cool website! Definitely check it out!)

It's been a lot of work so far, but I'm so excited to show my mom the final product! So far I've contacted about 90 people, and about half have gotten back to me with wonderful stories! Some are funny and some are very heart-felt. (Those ones usually make me cry)

The only problem is that I have no idea what I'm going to write my story about! But I'm not the only one. Everyone closest to her - me, my dad, my sister, my aunt - have yet to write something for my mom. I suppose it makes sense. I mean I lived in the same house with my mom for 18 years, how am I suppose to choose one happy memory?

Anyway, I'm just very very excited about this project and I can't wait to show it to my mom!

My Mom's Sick and We're Having Fun

My mom's health has gotten worse. She's almost entirely bedridden now. She can't move her left leg and left arm. And chewing on the left side of her mouth is hard, so much so that she bite the left side her lip every time she eats and it bleeds.

But even with her health getting worse, I'm finding that I'm actually having more fun with her. Now I know that sounds bad, but let me explain.

My mom was diagnosed a year and a half ago. And up until a few weeks ago, I always felt like I wasn't spending quality time with my mom. Like every time I went to visit her, I never left satisfied that I had spent memorable time with my mom. And each time I visited her, I would have this anxiety about making sure this visit wouldn't go to waste. And with all the anxiety, I could never really enjoy myself.

I'm not really sure what has changed, but ever since my mom enter the rehab hospital (CPMC in San Francisco), I've felt like I can finally relax and enjoy my time with my mom.

It took me 17 months of freaking out that I wasn't doing the whole "spend quality time with my mom" thing right to just relax and enjoy my time with my mom. When I used to visit her even 2 months ago, I would never want to say goodbye, not because we were having such a great time, but because I didn't want to leave her feeling like the visit wasn't worthwhile.

Now when I visit, I don't want to leave because I'm genuinely having fun. It such a remarkable feeling, and I'm so glad I've finally made it to this point! I would hate for my mom to die and to just feel like I didn't spend quality time with her.

I think maybe the change is because her health has gotten worse. Maybe during this whole thing, she didn't look sick enough for me to be genuinely happy to be sitting next to her. I think before she looked sick, I felt like I was just forcing myself to try to spend quality time with her because I knew  would feel guilty when she was gone. Everything I did regarding my mom was run by guilt.

But now that she actually looks sick, I honestly just have a lot of fun being with her.

I wish I had felt this way last year when we went on that mother-daughter weekend trip together. I remember feeling so uncomfortable and guilt-tripping myself into anxiety. I wish so much that my mom and I could do that trip over again. But hey, if she were well enough to go on a trip, maybe I would still feel anxious and guilty.

My mom and I at the beach at Point Reyes National Seashore

So yes, I'm horribly sad that my mom's health is getting worse, and I hate watching her try to stand up and not being able to. But I'm also so incredibly grateful that I'm no longer just terrorized by guilt. That I can simply enjoy every second I spend with my mom.

Can You "Guess Who?"

*This blogpost will only make sense if you know how to play the children's game "Guess Who"*

Visited my mom at the hospital today. I brought her that kids' game "Guess Who" because I thought it would be a good way to work on her speech (she has trouble speaking loudly and clearly). But it didn't go as well as planned.

When I showed her the game, she started talking about how when she first bought the game for me, I was only five years old and too young to understand the concepts of "process of elimination" or that I had to eliminate the opposite of the question I asked.

But when we started playing, she just couldn't do it. She kept asking questions that were true about her own person (the person I was trying to figure out). She asked me if my person was a woman. I said yes. Then she asked me if my person was bald... I said no and tried to tell her that she would only be looking at the women. Then she asked me if my person had a mustache. At that point, I knew this was not worth continuing.

She also likes to fiddle with things with her right hand (because she can't move her left hand), so she just was constantly knocking tiles over that she wasn't supposed to and I'd have to rush to fix them. We only got through one game because my aunt had to tell her what questions to ask me.

It was so strange to watch. She obviously understood the rules of the game, but when it came time to actually play the game, her brain just couldn't handle it. She must have been playing the game just as I did when we first bought it fifteen years ago.

My Mom's A True Businesswoman

When I was 15, I got a job working for my parents' architecture firm as an office assistant. Both my parents are architects - they actually met at school. My mom's the president of the firm and my dad's the vice-president. That's always how it's been.  (Girl power!)

But I never really knew what it meant that my mom was the boss for about 20 employees. In my mind she was just my mom that nagged me when do my laundry or what-not.

When I started working there, I saw my mom in a whole new light. I watched as she handled everything with skill and grace like she'd been doing it her whole life. She told me once that she had to learn how to become a leader, it didn't come naturally to her. But watching how she worked in the business, it looked like she new exactly what she was doing.

A few weeks into my job there, my mom called for a company meeting. I had never seen her take such command. We were all sitting around a large glass conference table, and all eyes and ears were on her. It was incredible to watch. I wanted to goof off because she was my mom! But everyone else seemed so interested in what she had to say. I had never seem her like that before. My respect for her grew immensely during my time working at her business.

I know I've mentioned this before, but just one month before my mom's diagnosis, her story was published in MARCH Magazine, a magazine focused on women in business. You can read the article about her here.

Also only one month before the diagnosis, my mom submitted a video essay about how her company handled the recession to the New York Times, though it was never published on their blog. Here's the video:

I am so incredibly proud of my mom for all that she has accomplished with her business and her career.

Since the diagnosis, she has become mentally more and more like a child. It's been so sad to watch.

But on Tuesday we had a meeting with all the doctors and nurses at the rehab hospital she's at about where we should go from here. She took her rightful spot at the head of the conference table. One again, all eyes and ears where on her. She spoke with clarity and control. She was a true leader. She was the woman that surprised me 5 years ago at her company's conference room.

It was truly a beautiful sight. She commanded that conference meeting! I'm so incredibly proud of her.

I recently read my mom's bio about herself on her company website:

Noushin S. Murphy, President, CEO, Founder

I am a Persian immigrant born and raised in Iran. I have lived in the U.S. since 1978 when I came over to pursue my higher education in Architecture. In 1995 I established Vincent + Murphy, Inc. together with my partner K. Vincent. Since then, our small two person firm has grown to be the twenty person firm it is today.

Acting as the president of this company for over a decade has taught me many attributes. It has taught me patience and how to think clearly so as to determine the direction of the company and set goals to accomplish them. It has taught me that a group of people no matter how well educated and experienced, look to their leader for inspiration and direction. Over the years we have been able to surround ourselves with a group of talented and intelligent people. Our employees are dedicated, hard working, and diligent. Most of them are involved with their outside of work passions and interests that would promote their sense of self. I feel proud of every one of them and their accomplishments and enjoy watching them flourish.

In my personal life I have been blessed with a wonderful family. My husband and I enjoy spending time with our two daughters tremendously. My daughters and I paint together in our free time. We also take dance lessons together. My husband and I enjoy traveling a lot. We hope to do more once the girls are off to college. 




But the part the really caught my attention was the last part:

I hope that this company carries on after me. I hope and trust that eventually the younger group of people we have here are capable to take on the leadership role and carry the torch of VMI without me.

It almost feels as though she knew all of this was going to happen. It so eery to read that. I keep reading it over and over again.

I can't even imagine how my mom's company must be doing with her. My dad barely goes into the office 3 times a week. And my mom's original partner, K. Vincent, had to leave the company a few years ago due to medical issues as well.

Her business that she put everything into, is without a leader. And there's no way my dad could ever fill her shoes. He's a terrible leader. He never even participated in the company boding activities my mom planned!

I have no idea how all of her employees are coping. I just hope that one of them takes over as the leader soon. I cannot watch her business fall apart without her.

I Wish Money Weren't An Issue.

My dad is so unbelievably infuriating sometimes!

I asked him for some money because I'm a broke college student and I would like to visit my mom more. But visiting her costs a lot of money. Visiting her at the hospital costs me about $35 when you total gas, bridge toll, and parking fees. It's awful that visiting my dying mother is so dependent on money, but it's the situation I'm in right now.

I try to visit her as often as I can afford, but without a job, that turns into barely twice a week. I've been applying to several jobs over the past couple weeks, but so far, no luck.

Trust me, I do not want to spend my time working in an office while my mom is dying, but at this point, I have no choice.

Not only have medical expenses greatly hurt our family's finances, but also that my dad spends money on things he really shouldn't! It so frustrating!

Like I mentioned before, he recently bought my mom a $1000 laptop and a Kindle Fire. Neither of which my mom can even use!!! Why would she want those thing! Also last week he bought himself a new pair of shoes. Which wouldn't seem like a big deal except for the fact that I have been begging him for money for new shoes for weeks now! (The only shoes I have a flip flops.)

I showed my dad these shoes I've been wearing throughout winter, and he refused to give me money for new shoes.

I'm so tired of being forgotten about! I know I'm supposed to be an adult now or what-not. But honestly, I'm a college student who can't get a job, and all I want is some new shoes and to visit my more!

And you want to know his response to all of this?

"Why do you need more money? You only visit mom twice a month."

TWICE A MONTH? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? Who spent all three day of Memorial weekend at the hospital with her and then came back that Thursday even though I couldn't afford it?


I just wish money weren't an issue right now. It's the last thing in the world I wish I had to be dealing with right now.

I'm going to hate myself when my mom's gone if I don't spend enough time with her just because I can't afford it.