Editor’s Note: “Leitmotif” was first published in Volume 16 of the Delmarva Review in 2023 and was selected to be featured in the new anthology, The Best of Delmarva Review.
Author’s Note: My daughter and I had breast cancer at the same time. Hers was more severe than mine and she didn’t survive. Writing, putting things on paper always helps me understand how I feel about something. “Leitmotif” did that for me.
Leitmotif
DURING A MOMENT of afternoon delight my husband discovered a lump in my breast. After an all-clear mammo two months prior—so much for regular screening. Yet even with a lumpectomy that left my boob scarred and mangled, he still thought I was sexy.
I waltzed—maybe two-stepped— through twenty-five rounds of radiation and continued working throughout. A month later, my arm swelled to twice its normal size. Lymphedema. A chronic condition that blocks the body’s liquid flow. Per protocol, I donned a compression sleeve and glove and religiously massaged and exercised my puffed-up appendage. Within months, no swelling. This disease can return at any time but since my surgery nine years ago, it has not.
I have been lucky on all fronts. A little humor there. But I need it; if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.
About my daughter.
A year or so before my cancer, Leslie, not yet 50, engaged to be married, suffered a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction, her fiancé by her side every step of the way. She too was lucky in love. But not in cancer.
From the get-go her numbers weren’t good. Out went her uterus to prevent the disease from spreading to there. She put herself on an exercise and healthful eating regime; she took prescribed drugs, endured infusions. For six years, cancer threw in bowel, kidney, and heart problems. Her hair went, but not her will. She left herself open to trials like a mouse in a lab.
We would talk about her cancer, her various treatments, her worries—one of which was burdening me with her illness. What is a mother for if not to be burdened by her child’s distress? My cancer? I didn’t talk about it in anything more than a cursory way. There wasn’t much to say. I’d had my surgery and whatever action was called for; I was well.
Time has a way of filling in the blanks, of opening the past to a wider lens. Maybe it was because I was in such good health and she was challenged every day with some new catastrophe, that I felt guilty bringing it up. In hospital rooms of drips and pumps and monitors beeping, I stayed strong for her and gave of myself. Did I say all the right things? There’s a funny! Not on your life! There were times I asked too many questions about her treatment: “When I want you to know, you’ll know!” Other times, not enough: “Don’t you care?!” So there’s that.
Folks talk about “going forward” and “moving on” after a great loss, as if they got themselves a better job, or found a new love after a breakup. Me? Did the sun rise in the morning and set before dusk? The very cosmos might have rearranged itself and the opposite may have been true. I was frozen, benumbed with grief. I could not think. I could not feel. A part of me, a big part, had died with her. There! I said the d word! “Passed on,” folks like to say. It sounds less final than “died.” Has a more graceful ring to it, don’t you think? As if she had gently floated off to some ever-lovely world, free of pain and disease. Died is so… dead!— one year now. (Pfft, and she was gone, as with the wave of a magician’s wand.)
I see my friends now. I’m knitting again. The other day I rolled out my yoga mat. I’m a phone friend to a shut-in; like clockwork, five on Friday, I call her, and we chat for an hour. Just this morning an idea for a short story popped up. I may even take in a movie this afternoon. Leslie loved the movies. Maybe I’ll give her… No, I won’t give her a call, will I? (Lapses of memory, I have them now and again.) But I keep on. And Leslie, my precious child, her loving smile, and bulletproof spirit, her “Tell me everything!” is keeping right along with me. A life-giving undersong to my each and every day.
♦
Rita Plush (New York) is the author of two novels, Lily Steps Out and Feminine Products, and a short story collection, Alterations. She is the book reviewer for Fire Island News and has been a guest on The Author’s Corner on Public Radio. Her stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, MacGuffin, The Iconoclast, The Sun, Kveller, Jewish Week, Broadkill Review, Backchannels, LochRaven, Avalon Literary Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Sanctuary Magazine. She is from Queens, New York. Website: www.ritaplush.com.
The Delmarva Review has been published annually from St. Michaels, Maryland for sixteen years. Its editors selected the most compelling new poetry. creative nonfiction, and short stories from thousands of submissions nationwide (and beyond) for publication in print and electronic editions. At a time when many commercial and literary magazines have closed their doors or reduced literary content, the review has stood out to help fill the void in print. Selection has always been based on writing quality. Almost half of the writers have come from the greater Chesapeake-Delmarva region. As an independent literary publication, the review has never charged writers a reading or publishing fee. The Delmarva Review is available worldwide from all major online booksellers. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.