The Real Fake World

This memoir is about how my mother's illness affected my life and relationships during this six year time period, but it is also generally about the human experience. Who are we when constantly reminded that death waits for us right around the corner?

What makes this story different from most is that my mother was psychic, or what she liked to call a sensitive. I knew since the age of ten that she would die young. She told me she would, and she was never wrong.

I begin the story with a metaphor - a crashing plane. An adolescent boy deals with the illness of his mother, pretending not to feel the world around him, until which time the plane begins to crash and he is told that his mother is dying. This is a different kind of dying message though, he's heard those many times before. This message, delivered in the last 6 months of her life, feels real. It is not the impending threat of another surgery or another tumor, but something more, something the boy feels and knows to be true. As this 'reality' sets in, a feeling of turbulence builds within the boy and mixes with the threat of an end he knows he cannot change. This presses him up against an emotional wall that refuses to let up, and like a cornered animal, it leads to a feeling of desperation and the rules of his society to crumble around him.

His mind eventually reaches a tipping point where it is willing to do anything to find a way to escape the horrors building within itself. This breakdown reshapes how he sees and hears his friends and family, it escalates his sarcastic and sometimes humorous view of the world, and it leads to the trashing of his self-esteem as he throws his body carelessly into alcohol abuse and the arms of the women around him.

Knowing from the age of 10 that his mother would die, the boy constantly struggles against this power and the idea that her death is inevitable. He turns this idea around in his mind every which way he can like a feverish dream, trying his best to come to an understanding of it, all the while, doing his best to try and stop it.

This book is relevant to any parent going through cancer and wondering its affects on their child. It is also relevant to any adolescent and young adult with a parent suffering from cancer.