Blue Butterfly 🦋Flies Home - March 25th 2025

Originally posted on Medium March 25th, 2025. Please see my Medium for more the most recent posts and to support my writing! https://filmgirlphilosopher.medium.com/blue-butterfly-goes-home-c3a67f4ab42e

 As I walked down the hospital corridor toward the palliative care unit, where my mom is coming to spend the remainder of her life in comfort, I heard a man on the phone. He was explaining, almost in disbelief, how his loved one had a tumor, and how they’d just found out. Then, the night after, they had to rush her to the ER… and she went downhill so fast. “It all just happened so fast,” he said with a quiet acceptance of someone who’s had to explain this to countless family members in the last 24 hours.

In that moment, I felt a connection with him. The same thing is happening to us. Sometimes it just does happen that fast. My mom just found out she had cancer a month ago, she had emergency surgery and then had to wait 3 weeks for chemo in order to recover. We moved her from Idaho to Nashville where we live to be her caretakers and adjusted to the idea that for the next 1–5 years we would be caring for our mother through the most challenging fight of her life. We knew we were in for a rough battle, but not a single ounce of our bodies or minds thought we’d never even get the chance to face that battle with her. It was a little too ironic. Like a man preparing for war, facing the prospect of death and then having a heart attack the next day. We thought we’d have a chance. We did everything right. We had the best doctors we could find at Vanderbilt Hospital, world renowned care. We had an appointment with a naturopathic doctor who specializes in oncology to cover all bases. We read a brick thick book about cancer care and were helping buy every device and supplement under the sun that has ever been hinted at to help with things hinted at to help cancer. But none of it mattered. She never even got to us the ionic foot bath that we later found out was a scam. She never even got the chance to try the cold cap to prevent her hair falling out during chemo. Perhaps that is a saving grace, because she really loved her hair and didn’t want to lose it.

I think about all the nurses who helped us along the way and about Rhonda, the nicest sweetest angel who checked us into her first oncology appointment. Rhonda had been a survivor of cancer herself and she saw the fear in mom’s eyes. She spent 25 minutes talking to us as we waited for our appointment, telling my mom how she will get through this and how God is in control. I am so grateful for their kindness and compassion to my family. They gave my mom hope. I’ve been learning recently that hope is not always hope for this earth, but hope for the next. We are not likely going to see my mom come back from this, but I have hope that there is a heaven where she will go and finally be the happiest version of herself I’ve always wanted to meet. She will be with her sister, her mom and dad, aunts and uncles and she will finally be free of the chains the bound her on earth. Chains like stress, hardship and life challenges that she managed daily with grace, but didn’t have the resources to overcome.

My biggest hope is now her life will finally be easy and full of love and joy instead of bills, responsibilities that are heavy to bare and worries for her children and future.

Here in palliative care Faith and Hope are the two most valuable commodities.

We are processing and accepting what is to come. It doesn’t help to wish things were different, to wish things didn’t happen so fast. But I do have these wishes, I just want to say them outloud one time and then let them fly away like the blue butterfly they taped to our mothers hospital room door signifying “end of life, give the family space.”

Here I go: I wish I had more time.

I wish I could’ve shared more of my world with her, my favorite places here in Nashville, the coffee shops I go to when I need to get out of the house, the parks I walk through with my husband and my dog when I need to see beauty.

I wish I could’ve introduced her to my friends, the people who’ve become my community, many of whom are praying for her right now.

I wish I’d known she wasn’t going to be here much longer so our last weeks were focused on quality time and less on frantically running around to treat a cancer that we were never going to get the chance to treat. I wish I had the chance to paint with her, she is such a talented artist, I wish I had time to take her to brunch even. We had 1 week together before she was back in the hospital for good.

So if you’re ever hesitating — wondering whether to make that trip to see your parents or stay and get more work done — choose your parents. Choose the visit. Choose the time together.

And if you’re asking yourself whether you can handle another lunch filled with their old habits or frustrations — you can. You really can.

No one’s parents are perfect. But when they’re gone, you won’t regret the hard moments. You’ll be grateful for every single one you had together.

And what I am grateful for, during her week here I went to her doctor appointment and was at the hospital all day as she learned all she was hopefully going to be able to do to fight the cancer. She was anxious and I was there. I’m grateful for Saturday, the day before she went to the ER, when she was getting weak and tired, but I got to be there with her on the porch swing getting sun. I got to take her to get an IV at one of those Iv therapy clinics for people with hangovers or who are super health conscious. It really did help her since she was so dehydrated and she had the generosity to even tell me “why don’t You get one too”, I didn’t, but that’s the kind of person she is, always thinking of others, even to her detriment. I was touched how kind the nurse at the IV clinic was, and serendipitously she happens to also work in the palliative care unit we are in now. I saw her picture on the wall saying how Alex is know for her care and love of patients. I immediately recognized her and as I was telling my family that’s the kind nurse who gave us the IV, she walked in. It’s little things like that I am grateful for, the kindness in humanity and how people rise to their best selves in hard times. I know God sent Alex to us as well as all these others kind nurses.

I know God is ready to welcome my mom with open arms into his home where she can finally do all the fine art painting she truly wanted to do.