My mother died of kidney cancer in February of this year. I was there, and boy I can tell you there was no shortage of visitors to her room in her last weeks, which was a testament to the number of people whose lives she touched. She was an extraordinary woman in many ways — very driven, incredibly resilient, and with a tremendous reservoir of love and giving for anyone who needed it. But one attribute came out during that time that was quite unexpected: humour.
One day there were three women in the room besides her (her sister, friend, and daughter), and at some point the conversation turned to dieting. A discussion about best diets ensued and what each woman had tried when suddenly my mom chimed in above the din, “Well, you know what I did…” Everyone turned their heads in rapt attention, at which point, in a perfect deadpan voice she said “I got cancer. Works every time.”
Everyone in the room heard it. The three women and I immediately burst into uproarious laughter (surely to the chagrin of her roommate behind the curtain wall), and my uncle, the sole abstainer, stood there in uncomprehending disbelief, as though she was failing to behave in a manner befitting her illness. In his mind this was no time for jokes. In her mind, this was a time as ripe for jokes as any other, perhaps moreso, and boy she’d thought up a doozy. And it was so gut-bustingly powerful precisely because of the direness of the situation.
One could read more into her words, and takeaway more from the joke than I think she intended. Or maybe she did intend more. She may have been subtly pressing the notion that, really, nobody should give a shit about diets. For anyone who knew her this will sound completely out of character. Among her flaws I would count a pathalogical obsession with weight — both hers and that of others. Her automatic response when offered a treat was always “Oh, I shouldn’t, I don’t want to get fat,” — although the treat didn’t often escape unscathed. And no overweight person crossed her orbit without some kind of disparaging remark conveyed to whomever she was with at the time. She was constantly physically active. Nobody would believe she would be one of the first of her generation to be felled by anything except perhaps a large bus or meteor. The children were certain that she would be the last parent or in-law standing. She was to outlive everyone, and yet there she lay — the fittest person in their seventies that any of us knew — felled by an aggressive cancer no one could have predicted. Had she come to the conclusion in her dying hours that it really doesn’t matter much what you do, so you may as well just enjoy yourself? Fuck diets? Was this some kind of glib expression of her frustration with how things had turned out and the opportunities missed or freedoms not partaken? If she had known this was going to happen in defiance of her efforts, would she have placed less priority on weight maintenance and been less judgmental about it?
I don’t know. I didn’t ask her, and the moment passed into history, seared into my memory. It was the brightest instant of the entire time in that hospital room and subsquent brief hospice stay. She kept her sense of humour to the very end. I honestly don’t know how common that is, but I thought it extraordinary. It was a hell of a joke at a time when we all needed something to laugh about — a small parting gift I will always treasure.