There's a medium black 3 ringed binder I keep with my dad's medical paperwork. There is a loose sheet of paper folded in half, a prescription receipt from our local pharmacy. The receipt is unassuming, typical, except for the fact that I've saved it for nine years.
The words "Hospice HomeCare" have been manually highlighted in green. There are 3 prescriptions for my father. Levetiracetam 500mg, Risperidone 2mg and Lorazepam 2mg dated 5/14/2015. The first is for seizures, the second is an antipsychotic and the third is for anxiety. These were three medicines out of a cornucopia of medicines my father would take. His pill tray often reminded me of skittles if the candy were misshapen and pastel colored. This seems like an inconsequential piece of paper so why did I save it? And why does it make me cry now?
There's scrawl of numbers near the bottom each with a dash in front: -3.6 x 3.6 x 4.7 and -4.4 x 4.6 x 5.3. These are measurements of my dad's tumor. The first set of numbers represents the size of the tumor during radiation treatment. The second set is its size after we returned to the Big Island. Seeing this receipt, I'm transported back to the day my mother wrote out those fateful numbers.
My elbows pressed hard into our dining room table as I leaned in to hear the radiologist on the other end of the line. My mom had the phone slightly away from her ear, but I only heard a mumble. She decisively wrote the first numbers onto the receipt. I held my pen lightly so as to be in confidence with her. I began to sketch out a triangle, I wanted to do everything with her, be there in every way.
Since I couldn't hear what the radiologist was saying I focused instead on my mother's hands. Her beautiful, slender fingers wrapped tight around the ball point pen. Each decimal was punctured into the page because this was life or death. She wrote out -3.6 x 3.6 x 4.7.
I can't remember if she started crying before she wrote the next line or while she was writing it. I could have burnt that receipt with the intensity of my stare. She started with a 4. I began to cry. I'd known from as long as I learned to count that 4 was bigger than 3 and in the case of brain tumors, bigger is never better. Each number she wrote was bigger than the last, 4.4 x 4.6 x 5.3. I gripped my pen in anger. I could have snapped it in half. I drew some hard squares at the bottom of the receipt. What else could I do? I drew an angry maze of squares, each line pushed in harder than the last, each square engulfing the other. I felt myself grow tight, snap and then go slack like drawing these squares was the only thing I wanted to do. Nothing seemed real or important. I wanted to draw the squares through the paper into the dining room table and then I wanted to sit with my mom and dad in the kaleidoscope of grooves I cut out with my anger. Inside the smallest square we held each other in love and despair.
I looked over at my dad in his hospital bed, Kapa radio playing in the background. That was the last call we got from the radiologist. You know how some things are so finite? That's why I kept this receipt. It is finite. A physical representation of when we learned that dad have unequivocally lost. Though the memory is painful, I cherish it because it is a part of my life and dad's life and mom's life. It may be the most cherished receipt I have.
