298. Leave Your Name at the Door - Alexa Wilding

When my son Lou was first hospitalized for cancer, I’d stay up nights writing songs. The melodies kept looping in my head, as did certain lyrics, like the lines “red river run, red river run” while I stared at the East River and the red IV lines, the endless blood transfusions. The looping lines reminded me of spinning analog tape in a recording studio, my natural habitat—a land I could not have found myself further from.

At the time, I was as afraid of losing myself as I was of losing my son. I didn’t know how to share this fear with anyone, lest they think me a bad mother. The threat of erasure was only reinforced by the well-meaning medical team never calling me by my name. “Everything okay in here, Mom?” the nurses would ask. “Yep!” I’d lie, hiding the keyboard I’d borrowed from NYU Langone’s Child Life Services under the rough hospital blankets. I knew it was protocol to just call me Mom, but I had a name, and how I longed to hear it.

Sometimes we moms would gather in the hallway with pretzels and Cokes. There was one dad, Brian, whose wife “couldn’t handle it.” We were fascinated by this absent mother. “She’s not a real mom,” Maria in Room 902 would insist. But maybe she was more real than all of us for admitting that this was too much for a mother to bear.

As cancer caregivers, we had to leave our names at the door. And rightfully so; we were leading the battle to save our child’s life. Yet underneath our suit of armor was a complex human with deep desires, hopes, and dreams, and a hunger for more than just her crisis.

I satiated that hunger by working on my third album. Maria bought crystals online. Felicia liked to go on long runs along the river. Brian seemed to be obsessed with Mary, the night nurse. Some of us drank. There were affairs and other bad decisions, as one’s head is not screwed on straight when you’re terrified. While we cut each other slack, we feared the outside world would not.

A part of me is still pacing the hospital hall with my pretzels and Coke, even though it’s been five years since Lou left treatment, even though he’s thriving. Whenever I sing “red river run, red river run,” or other songs from that time, I think of the parents I’ve met along the way. I say their names: Maria, Brian, Felicia. I hope they’ve forgiven themselves, as I have, for all the things we did to survive our child’s illness. And I hope they allow themselves whatever they need to soothe their still healing hearts.

Alexa Wilding

Prompt

Write about a time in your life when you struggled to hold onto your sense of self. What did you do to survive, and who helped you along the way? Were you able to forgive yourself for any missteps? Is the person you became in that moment of crisis still part of your identity?