“I hate you,” she used to hiss. Under my breath, I would diss: “Suit yourself. That’s your problem, not mine.”

My back turned, she would hit out: “Horrible woman.” In my mind, I huffed: “Look yourself in the mirror.”

She: “You torture me.”

(Me: “You extend the courtesy.”)

The resentment bubbled long under our lids. One day, it boiled over.

From her seat on the sofa, she flung down the gauntlet. “Throw up where?” she muttered to the maid. “Throw up IN HER FACE.”

She didn’t think I did, but I heard. She didn’t think I would, but I rose to the challenge. I turned, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, and said: “I’m here. Go ahead. Throw up IN MY FACE.”

Time stood still for a moment. But the normal routine resumed after that.

Or did it?

Haste the day

Those were heated breaths we took – harder for her than for me.

Meal times stoked her ire, and we fired away. She wouldn’t eat; I wouldn’t have it. She staged the histrionics; I was wise to her script.

The tension of vicious brooding was insufferable. But the battle of wills had to be fought.

In those last lengthy weeks, she needed 24/7 minding. Eating was the only activity left with any rules to break, and she still had it in her to break every single one of them.

Much ado she always made about a bowl of porridge blended in the food processor. She could get riled up enough to spit out successive mouthfuls and pick a fight, but those times eventually became fewer and further between.

We came to the stage of oral morphine every four hours. It was effective for perhaps two hours, during which there would be fitful sleep. Restlessness would follow. There would be no position in which she could be comfortable, whether sitting or standing, lying down on her right or left. 

Frustration would tighten its stranglehold and, in a panic, she would scream: “I can’t breathe!”

The oximeter would show a reading of above 95% oxygen saturation, and defeat would emanate as a forlorn sigh out of her soul.

The cancer was on a winning streak. It bowed to neither tantrum nor therapy, eroding her defences and her dignity.

Drugs mitigated the suffering but did not remove it. Where the pills once held out hope of relief, they were now merely bitter to swallow.

“Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight” was her fervent prayer at first. As the days dragged on into weeks, fury began to pour forth: “Want to die, cannot die. What have I done to deserve this?”

The pain mounted, the will to press on became muted. Was there anything left to say?

Let faith be sighted

There was. 

And it was a hard saying.

Our shared circumstance was enough of a mighty whirlwind (Job 38:1-2) to have a silent eye, and it was into that which God chose to speak: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)

I was dumbfounded.

Her race was coming to an end and her endurance was wearing thin, but I wasn’t among the cloud of witnesses cheering her on. (Hebrews 12:1-2) After all, shouldering the burden of her care was not a choice I would humanly have made.

Left to myself, I would’ve preferred to cross the street and pass by on the other side. 

But for the grace of God that wouldn’t let go of either of us, I might very well have – and there would have been no hope of a better tomorrow for me. 

Love was supposed to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. (1 Corinthians 13:7)

That wasn’t my witness.

Love was supposed to be patient and kind, not arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)

I was none of those things. I did not have the generosity of heart to have compassion for the despair that brought damage to her person.

The doctor did advise that chronic intense pain affected the chemical balance in the brain and the patient’s character was likely to be altered.

I wasn’t sure I cared. She wasn’t my patient. She was my mother-in-law.

The Lord will perfect

Was there anything, then, that I would have wanted really to say?

With my God-given breath, the bowl of porridge in my hand, it was still: “Open your mouth.”

The Voice within had its own words: Believe in God; believe also in Me. (John 14:1)

“Swallow your food.”

God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)

“Don’t spit it out.”

Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. (Hebrews 3:15)

“Say ‘thank you’.”

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever: Forsake not the works of Thine own hands. (Psalm 138:8 KJV)

When she died, I wept. Who would’ve thought?