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Living in the Twilight Zone

by Cheryl Thiessen  
2/25/2009 / Death

Life takes on an "other world" feel when caring for a dying parent. You know you have entered another dimension when morphine is delivered to your doorstep or when knowing how to work a concentrated oxygen machine becomes second nature; or the care you now provide to your mother, is strangely familiar and even reminiscent of the care you provided to your infant children not so many years ago. Life now has a new "normal". Welcome to life in the Twilight Zone.

There is a strangeness that comes with each new day. Even the rhythm of familiar routines has now changed, and there is no "rhythm", but rather a disjointed beat that drives each day. I am increasingly weighed down by the requirements of this zone--the demands it makes of my attention and energy--pressing in on me harder and with more force. I find myself longing for "leisure time", "down time" or even out-right boredom but instead I'm confronted with more lists, more emotions to digest, and working out with my siblings, the nights and days I'll be staying with mom so she won't be alone.

The emotional tug-o-war in this twilight zone is fatiguing and I relish any little bit of joy and levity I can find. Battling feelings that are similar to what I experienced the first time I was in childbirth--those feelings of being trapped and without options other than to commit to the process and seeing things through to the end--I know there is no room for wimp-ing out now.

As much as I'd like to just deny the twilight zone's existence and run away from its invisible, unrelinquishing pull, I can't. I have to acknowledge it, daily, and make a choice--A willful choice--to show up, enter the zone and live in the zone, fully, knowing this is where I choose to be--living in an "other world" because I love my mom.

I am a freelance writer from Oregon. I'm a wife to my husband, Ron, and mother to 2 sons and 2 daughters. In 2008 my mother died from cancer and some of my current writings are about that journey.

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