Photos in a Hospital Room

 

The smell of cleaning supplies and hospital food do not mix. 

When you have a parent in the hospital, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. 

After spending sleepless nights on a hospital cot, trying to comfort the one in the hospital bed, keeping family updated, and staying out of hospital staff's way, food doesn’t sound very appealing. 

When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, nothing felt as important as supporting her, doing anything and everything that might help her. However, she’s an independent woman and does not like relying on others. 

Getting her to share the burdens of being sick has been difficult from the start. Mom insisted that she didn’t want us, her kids, disrupting our whole lives because she has cancer. 

But when your mom has cancer, it disrupts your life. There's no way around it. At any point you will remember and won’t be able to think about anything else. You’ll think about it at work, school, everywhere. 

Sometimes there's a really good day when life feels just right, but there is a guilt that comes with feeling happy. Like you don’t deserve to be happy because your mom has cancer. 

During one of my mom’s stays in the hospital, we managed to organize a visit with all of her kids there. She was so happy to have us all together. It had been a long time since that happened. It was a relatively good visit, as good as circumstances would allow. 

Since we were all there, mom wanted to take family photos. My grandparents have a wall in their house where they hang photos of all of their kids and their families. It had been about 10 years since we had updated the photo of our family. 

So a camera was set up on a hospital side table with a timer and everyone sat together on a bench by the window. The photos turned out nice and everyone laughed at the mishaps during the makeshift photoshoot. 

While we were sitting together waiting for the timer to go off I could only think one thing.

This is morbid.

We are taking family photos in a hospital because mom has cancer. 

After we finished the photoshoot my mom needed to rest, so we all vacated her room and made our way to the cafeteria.

It smelled like bland food and the cleaning supplies used throughout the hospital. A sharp antiseptic kind of smell that you can never get away from. 

I made a few food selections from what was available, a simple sandwich and a boxed slice of cheesecake. When the cashier scanned my selections my eyes bulged at the price. It was far higher than I would normally pay for a small meal. But there weren’t many options, so I paid the cashier and followed my siblings into the dining area.

Once we had all found seats at a table in the corner my brother, sister and I settled into an uncomfortable silence. We all knew how the others felt, no need to express it aloud. 

Slowly sibling rivalry pushed through the silence and we began playfully bickering as siblings do. Weightless threats were made, straw wrappers were thrown and a small feeling of normalcy returned. 

With the comfort of having my family there, a small amount of my appetite returned and I opened my cheesecake. Taking my first bite the little appetite I had disappeared. The dessert was both grainy and flavorless. An insult to cheesecakes everywhere. But I still ate it, savoring the rare opportunity to spend time with my siblings. 

In the best and worst of times I will always hate hospital food.