8:20 a.m.

“It’s not very good news,” she said, matter of factly. “You know that ultrasound I had done? They found a mass growing on my right kidney, and they want to take the kidney out right away.”

“Fuck OFF,” I said to my own mother.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “It's a bit extreme.”

“What else do they say?”

“Well, there isn’t much else to know, yet. It’s a common operation nowadays, not risky really. The main thing is to get the kidney out quickly.”

“Are you getting a second opinion?”

“No. I trust my doctor, and there’s no time.”

“Holy.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“I suppose your dad and you kids and Mom will worry about this more than I will,” she said. “All I have to do is get through it.”

She’d heard the test results and waited all afternoon for a call from the doctor’s office with a date for surgery. Dad had plans to go golfing, but thought he should stay home and wait with her. She told him to go, that she felt fine — “the same as yesterday.” He went, but got to the golf course and realized he wouldn’t be able to play, so turned around and drove back home.

Mom sounds typically stoic about it, which is her way. She has never been seriously ill, and we have always assumed that any scary health problems would be Dad’s, because of his heart. Those we feel somehow prepared for, although we are probably kidding ourselves. So we are shaken by this, although according to my sister Joan, who called later last night, only three per cent of kidney growths are malignant.

“You’ll have to do all that white-lighting stuff you do,” she said.

“And you’ll have to help me,” I told her.

Meanwhile, there’s no point in worrying, is there? A tear or two leaked out after Mom and I got off the phone, but I am not sure why. She’s all right, and probably will be fine. It’s fear, I guess, of losing my mother (a reminder that one day, if I outlive her, it will happen — a thought I can barely stand to have in my mind at all), and chagrin at her having to go through this in the first place.

Scott had come into the room and could tell there was something wrong, but I had a little trouble choking it out after Mom and I hung up. Then I could hardly stand his sympathetic glances. “Don’t feel so sorry for me,” I said. “It could be worse.”

“Well, it’s the first time you’ve been the one worrying,” he claimed, arms tightly about me. “Usually, it’s the other way around.”

Did I want to go out to BC? he wondered. I’d been considering it somewhat fuzzily, but his question provoked a clear certainty. “Mom will say ‘Don’t come when I’m not feeling good; wait until I can enjoy your visit!’ So ... I’ll go if they need me, like if she’s in a bad way after the operation and Dad can’t look after her for some reason.”

I will endeavour to spend the next week expecting a positive outcome, with my fingers crossed, and practising my praying.