Family Dinner

Growing up, I never had a Sunday family dinner. My life has been more tumultuous than most. It never really was a thing we were worried about. I remember my family worrying about getting food on the table, not worrying about who’s bringing what side dishes for a nice meal.

I guess it’s nice that we have family dinner now.

The first one was last night. It was nice, but I knew something was off. Family dinner sounds nice, right? But it was not something that we had done before.

It felt very much like when someone calls everyone in a room to deliver bad news. But I did not say that or anything. It was probably just my anxiety.

So, there I was, with my family. My mom, her boyfriend, my aunt, my sister and my great grandma. My core unit. They raised me, watched me laugh, watched me cry. And just a month ago to the day I moved out, seeing them much less often.

The fact that I had been away from them for so long hid my concern. I was sitting helping my sister complete a puzzle, while my grandma, mom and my mom’s boyfriend were cooking. My aunt was happily supporting both my sister and I while simultaneously helping prepare the meal. 

It was a familiar scene I secretly missed for the past month. The thought of being with my family was nice. As much as I had argued with my sister, I knew I missed being around her. The familiarity of my home mixed with being surrounded by the people I had missed for so long created such a comfort that wafted over me. 

I was sitting in the living room, where my mom had pulled her boyfriend in from barbecuing outside. I did not think anything of it. I was instead at the coffee table, setting up a game of dominoes for my aunt, sister and I to play. 

I was sorting the dominoes by number, so we could start properly. Silence was in the room, which in retrospect made sense. I was one of the only ones that did not know what was coming. Yet I broke the silence by moving the dominoes, made of a hard plastic, on top of a wood table. It was bound to be noisy.

My mom sat in my grandma’s recliner in the middle of the room, which was odd. We are not a particularly territorial family; what is mine is yours and vice versa, but we typically respected my grandma’s recliner. 

Her boyfriend sat behind her, my aunt on the couch with my sister. I was on the floor next to the coffee table.

The living room is small. We were all nearby each other, yet in our own respective worlds. The mental distance between us in the moment made the physical distance feel 100 times greater than what it actually was.

My mom calls my grandma into the room. But the stubborn old lady consistently refuses to wear her hearing aids, so it took a little longer for her attention to be caught. 

She eventually enters the living room from the kitchen. My mom tells her to sit down.

This caught my attention. I look up from my 5-4 domino piece, my favorite piece, and make a face. Why were we all assembled in the living room like this? It’s rare all of us are in the same building at the same time, but to intentionally gather us in the living room together?

My mom leans forward and says she has something to say. My immediate thought was that she was pregnant, but after a second of thinking, I figured it was not that.

My alarms were buzzing at that moment in time. I just looked back at my dominoes. If my mind was occupied, I did not have to live in the moment. 

My aunt puts her hand over my dominoes, telling me to stop.

My alarms stopped buzzing, just so they could blare. The internal alarm sounded less like a wake up alarm and more like a tornado siren. Loud, obvious, and impossible to ignore.

My sister was taken aback, but she did not know what was happening. Observing the faces of the others, I could tell that my aunt and my mom’s boyfriend knew what was coming.

Leaning forward, my mom mentions how lately her health had been more of a struggle for her than in the past. 

I knew that.

She’s just getting old right?

It happens to all of us. We grow weaker, more tired, more pain and more struggles. My mom, the strongest person I know, is no exception. 

My mom started crying.

That’s what got me.

My mom was pregnant with me in high school. She grew up with me, and my sister, who is only three years younger than myself. I saw her mature as I matured, and I saw her blossom into who she is today. We both experienced strong adversity, typically only having each other to lean on.

After all we had been through, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have seen her cry. Despite food and housing insecurity, evil people and dangerous situations, I never really saw her cry.

I knew whatever it was was going to hurt.

I look at my sister, who is already crying. She did not know what was coming, but she is the empathetic type. My aunt however, was crying but trying to hide it. Two sides of the same coin; the clueless one visibly crying and the one with the truth trying to save face.

I do not even know what my mom said verbatim. But she said that she was just diagnosed with lupus.

An autoimmune disease, lupus causes the white blood cells to attack the healthy cells in the body. While not fatal itself, life grows significantly harder.

Eventually, organs can be attacked and need to be replaced or operated on. And according to the Lupus Foundation of America, 89% of lupus patients have to stop working full time. 

Everyone but myself was sobbing. Growing up, I felt like I could not cry. Not for some weird masculinity reason, but because I always felt like I had to show my sister that everything was okay. If I cried, she would know it was not okay.

So I tried to save face. 

I gripped my 5-4 domino as hard as I could as my mom continued to sob. My grandma was holding her while my aunt gripped my sister’s hand. 

Everything else was a flash. My aunt and mom’s boyfriend talking about how we can help my mom. My sister sobbing. My domino.

All I could think of was how angry I was. 

My mom is one of the best people I know. She’s strong, smart and loving. She raised us on her own. She would make sure I was at baseball practice on time, while somehow getting my sister to soccer practice on time too. She made sure we did our homework, made sure we had clean clothes, all while working a full time job and pursuing her education.

She has been strong since she had me. Having a child as a teenager is not easy, so she never had a choice other than to not be strong. And while sometimes I wish that my mom was older, since all of my classmates had mid-30s parents while I had a 25-year-old parent, I was grateful that my mom was young.

It meant we could grow old together.

I know that is typically reserved for romantic couples, but there seemed to be something special and unique about growing old with my mom. 

But I am now terrified that that is going to be ripped from me.

I am terrified that instead of watching my mom grow old with me, I have to watch her grow weak while I am so young. While we are still so young. While we both have so much ahead of us.

I always said that I fear having to watch a family member suffer and grow weak, having to lose who they once were.

I guess I can still fear it, but now I no longer have to wonder what it will look like.

At the end of the day, I am always there for her. I do not care what is happening. I will be there for her just like she was for me. 

Afterwards, we silently indulged in some chicken and some other side dishes I cannot remember, probably due to my subconscious blocking out as much as I could. 

I have no clue what’s in store for us, but I know that whatever happens, my mom is always going to be the same mom that loved me, raised me, fought for me and taught me everything I know. 

I left the house early, saying I have homework to do. Which was true, but I knew I was not going to do homework. I wanted to go home so I could cry. As soon as I shut that front door, I sobbed.

I cried the whole way home.

Since then, I have mostly filled my time with crying. Just over 24 hours have passed, and it still hurts. She dropped off dinner for me earlier, and I had to try not to cry while I thanked her for the food.

But I know that is not what she wants.

So, in the meantime, I will educate myself on everything I need to know and stay strong.

If not for me, for her. She always said she hated seeing me cry.