Lucky, this point in time and space

As I am writing this, my mother is in pre-op at Tufts University Medical Center, about to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery.

I thought I was okay with this, until yesterday when I was a nervous wreck.

It is nothing as simple as fear that she's going to die. In fact, I'm not dwelling too much on that possibility, although she does have a higher risk of complications because of her diabetes.

It's the thought of her splayed out on a table, a tube down her throat, her ribcage broken open, on a bypass machine, veins ripped out of her legs, and her heart, still and unbeating, in some surgeon's hands. That's what's bothering me.

She's never been healthy in her entire life, thanks to her brittle diabetes, but she has also been unusually blessed in that she has never had any major medical complications from it, either. In the last few years she's had some frightening episodes of ketoacidosis, including one that resulted in a few days in intensive care, but DKA is a relatively quick fix.

I have lived in fear for the last few years of the inevitable day that one or both of my parents develop a major health problem. A heart attack, cancer, Alzheimer's, the worsening of my father's multiple sclerosis, kidney failure from the constant battle with my mother's diabetes. We've been so fortunate in so many ways. We are still fortunate that her atherosclerosis was caught before it caused a major heart attack.

But I feel it looming.

If I could, I would shield both of my parents from suffering, wrap them in some cocoon that would repel pain and disease and infirmity, that could knit broken limbs and soften stiff arteries and keep the grooves of their brain from wearing down with the weight of their years. But I can't. I can't even assuage my mother's constant grief over her collapsed marriage. Her depression is a fixed, immovable object, impervious to anything, as much a part of her now as her hair and skin. The only one with the key to vanquishing it is a man that is not even worth her time anymore, but until her dying day she will wish that he could be by her side. That is just one more thing I cannot give her.

Maybe that's the worst thing, that she has to go through all of this without him. She will be cut open and rearranged and when she comes through the other side he won't be at her bedside. My aunt and uncle and I will pick up the pieces again. He wouldn't even have called her if I hadn't badgered him.

Saturday I am flying out to help take care of her for as long as I need to. I suppose it's the only small blessing of my joblessness at the moment.

I am not nearly as religious as I used to be a few years ago, but I still believe in God and I still badger that God every day for small, ridiculous things: Please let this wedding photographer cost less than the last one. Please let the bakery not be out of raspberry cupcakes. Please let the grocery store not be crowded. Please let me finish this short story. Please let me get into graduate school. Please let me get a job. Please let me figure out what I want to do with my life.

And now, when I have something real to pray about, I feel like I can't, because I spend so much of my time worrying about things that don't matter. My mother matters. Her health matters. And my powerlessness over all of this makes praying feel less useful than usual.