Before my most recent visit home, my mother asked me if I wanted to try on wedding dresses. I'm not getting married. I'm not even close to being engaged. I didn't ask for the reasoning behind her suggestion because I was too afraid I already knew the answer: she wanted to see me in a wedding dress now because she wouldn't be alive to see it otherwise.

My mother's cancer is a burden we as a family have bore for over a decade, yet I have barely talked about it at length. Even a perusal through my diaries, which have tracked the minutiae of my life for years, reveal very few entries about the disease that has ravaged my mother's body. I'm an independent person; one who confronts my feelings and keeps little suppressed. But the exception is my mother and her illness. I hate hearing the word cancer. I hate seeing it in print, I hate reading about it. My close friends know she's sick, but don't know to what extent. Some of my friends aren't aware at all. That is my fault. For as long as I've been living with the hideous truth of terminal illness, I have been terrified to talk about it, because if I don't discuss it, I can't acknowledge its existence. The less I mention it, the less real it is. If I don't breathe a word about it to anyone, maybe it will somehow clear up and go away. Maybe she will stumble across a cure and regain her energy back, instead of spending days upon days sitting in front of the television, weaving in and out of slumber. The life has been sucked out of her; her body is frail and without strength. I've refrained from asking her too many questions because sometimes it's best not to know, but I broke down last week and asked her what treatment she was receiving. She's in a clinical trial. Her cancer has stopped responding to all other drugs.

My intuition tells me the end is near. I want to strangle my intuition. Throughout the day I don't think too much about my mother, as I'm busy with work, friends and errands. At night, however, when my mind has run dry of distractions, her saga takes center stage. I often have to take a step back and ask, "Is this really happening to me?" I had imagined that at some point in my life I'd need to care for my parents; I didn't think it would be this soon. I assumed my mother would be there on my wedding day, in the delivery room, on the other side of the phone when I called to announce a promotion. She is the one person, the only person, who thinks I'm great no matter what. Without her unconditional reassurance, I wonder if I'll ever feel happy or proud of myself again. I know her loss will ache for years. I won't ever get over it, I'll just get used to it. Thinking of the future suffocates me. I feel alone, I feel that no one in my life understands what this is like. I do not have the strength to do this on my own and I do not know where to turn. No human can lift the weight off my shoulders. Is it time to turn to religion? Is this punishment for straying? I wouldn't blame God if he turned his back on me. Serves me right for the years I spent doubting his existence.

I've been tossing around the idea of moving back home to be with her. She isn't so sick she can't care for herself, but I'll never forgive myself if this trip is the last time I see her. Every now and the she finds spurts of energy; on Thursday we went shopping, went out to eat and picked up a plant at a nursery. But those bright spots are countered with hours of sleeping. While she dozes I stare at her tiny body and think of the devastation that's taking place underneath. There's something inside that's destroying her and we're all powerless to stop it.

Perhaps most selfishly, I wonder if her illness is also my destiny. Will my life get cut short too? Will I spend years being pumped full of toxic chemicals? Will my husband be there for me? I love my father, but he is a lousy support system. He lives inside his routine and never bothers to venture beyond his self-imposed parameters. I doubt he even knows that status of her treatment. He never asks how she's feeling. He never volunteers to pick up anything from the grocery store or lend a hand around the house. He's healthy and that's all that matters to him; he probably gets some sort of sick satisfaction from having outsmarted disease. There are many wonderful things about my father, but compassion he lacks. I wonder if he were more interested in her, she'd be less lethargic. If she had a reason to wake up each morning, maybe she'd improve. The guilt I feel for living so far away is tremendous.

The only thing I can do is cherish each moment I have with her. Although my mother is weak, she's expressed interest in flying down to Charleston for a beach weekend, and that's encouraging to me. Here is a situation I can't control and perhaps that's what's been so difficult. We are at the mercy of a cluster of rogue cells in her body. We have witnessed her metamorphize into a shell of the woman she used to be. I no longer look forward to her getting better; I just prepare myself for when I'll get the call.

I hope she will live to see many more days. I hope she proves all the doctors wrong. And I hope she gets to see me in a wedding dress. For real.