For Whom the Bell Tolls

Today was my mom’s last round of chemo. I was there  along with her friend from work, my aunt (her best friend) and my father. My sister was also involved via a video chat on Skype. My mom was emotional, crying happy tears as she opened her gifts and cards and the various nurses visited. At the cancer center they have the tradition to ring a bell three times signaling the end of their treatment. On her first day of treatment my mom saw another woman ringing the bell and she cried, “I want to ring that bell!” so today she did. Her journey is not completely done, she still has two more surgeries and tests to be sure all the cancer is gone, but this is an important step in the right direction and certainly one to be celebrated. I was so happy to be there with her.

Last night Primero and I had another very lengthy conversation about this whole teen mom girlfriend thing. I think I’m at the point where I’m just tired of talking about it because I feel like I keep hearing myself say the same thing over and over and over again. He agreed to take a parenting class, I agreed to get to know his girlfriend. I tried to get him to understand how hard this was for me and why it was terrible that he would value his girlfriend’s parents opinion (if they asked her to break up with him, he would have to agree) versus my opinion. We also talked about him not comparing his mom and I together because that wasn’t fair to either of us (as in, “if my mom asked me to break up with her, I wouldn’t listen to her either”). I told him I will never be ok with this, I think it is a terrible idea and terrible choice. But, I promised to try to tolerate this whole big fat mess and so I must find a way to do that. Really, I just have to find a way to move on with my life and grit my teeth and bear it. I have to try not to hate the girlfriend for being pathetic and immature (she is only 16 after all). It all seems so impossible…….