Reality Check – A Mission

I visited my Mom the other day, mainly to deliver her trout to her. I got there in the afternoon, and she was upstairs in bed. She was tired, but wanted to visit a bit. She’d been through another round of chemotherapy that morning. She was propped up in bed watching television, with a scarf wrapped around her head. My mother has never been a vain woman, but the loss of her hair is bothering her, no matter what she might say.

At any rate, I told her that her trout were in the freezer. She asked me if they were small ones, and I said yes – these are her favorite. Then she said something that struck me as kind of funny. She asked me where I caught them, and I told her that they came from the brook behind my house. She asked, “Is it clean?”

Now, I understand why someone would ask that these days. Even here in Vermont, with its reputation for being pure and pristine, pollution is an issue – a very large issue in some places. There are advisories in effect concerning certain species of fish, and how much of it is safe to eat every month. In the central part of the state, where I live, I avoid fishing almost all of the lakes – they’re simply too polluted. There are a couple that are still quite clean, but the problem is growing. As for the rivers and streams, well, farm runoff has done a nice job of destroying many of them. In all honesty, it’s getting hard to find a decent place to fish in this area.

So I understand why my Mom would ask me about the water that those trout came from. On the other hand, this came from a woman who, on the day that she told me that she’s dying of lung cancer, sat on the sofa with an oxygen tube in her nose and a cigarette in her hand. When I looked at the cigarette, and then gave her “the look,” she said, “What? There’s no point in quitting now, is there?” In other words, I’m going to die, probably sooner rather than later, so why worry about it?

When she asked me about the trout, all I could think was, “Why is she worried about mercury in the fish? I seriously doubt it would accumulate enough to kill her before the cancer does.”

Something that I’ve been pleased to see is that her family has been rallying around her. They aren’t there constantly – they know that would more likely than not just serve to piss her off. But each time I visit, she’ll tell me that someone who lives out of state has called her, or my sister stopped by, or one of my uncles. They’re stopping by and checking in on her. This is good, because I think it does both her and them good to be able to have time together. If they get anything near what I get out of my visits to her, then they’re getting a lot.

Oh, the title of this post. I now have a mission – at least, as long as trout season is open. I’ll be making sure that my Mom always has a package of trout in her freezer. She doesn’t need much, her appetite is pretty much shot right now. But I’ll make sure she has a few fish in the freezer through the summer. It’s not much of a mission. But it’s something I can do for her – a simple little thing that gives her a little bit of pleasure.