Still Here
Patricia Quimby-Moro
Patricia Quimby-Moro
I believe in fate. The smell of pure isopropyl alcohol burnt my nose. The room was unnervingly cold. The silence was deafening, as if talking would break the temporary spell of peace that had fallen over room 514 of the oncology unit at Baptist Hospital. Located on the east side of the unit, this room was where my mom was receiving an intensive chemotherapeutic regimen in hopes of curing the lymphoblastic leukemia she had been diagnosed with weeks prior. I was barely twelve, and the word “lymphoblastic” fascinated me. How a word could be so grand, yet full of such quiet horror rendered me speechless and fueled my thoughts for months. There was a brown corduroy couch at the front of the room and I despised the comfort it brought me. Any sense of comfort at this point felt like a mortal sin that I would pay for for eternity, but still I could almost feel the heavy blackskirts of nuns giving me solace. On any typical day, I would sit and watch the putrid orange toxin that was chemotherapy be inserted and sent through my mom’s body through an I.V. This taught me to detest the color orange, as it was this chemical agent that was my mother’s savior and saboteur all at once. This was it; the long and ambiguous middle ground between death and
The silence of my family terrified me half to death; never before could I imagine us maintaining this code of silence for so long, and never had I heard a silence so deafening— enough silence to hear myself growing. It is rather strange to actively recognize that one is growing, as this feels like a fact only supposed to be recognized by those around me, so that they might bring up my growth on some distant Monday over an afternoon coffee. Voices shaking, my family would only speak to announce the arrival of a nurse or doctor. Constrained within the walls of this unrelenting room, I recall hearing my soul expand until it was too large for the body in which it was contained. A newfound sense of self was filling me like oil fills an ocean after a spill. This often resulted in me doing nothing for days on end, as nothing felt worth doing. These days, I found myself trying to grow closer and closer to the crayon-clad letters my mom wrote me in preschool, which are so much smaller than her body and my body and our bodies. When she wrote them, she wasn't thinking about what it would mean for me to grow up a girl in the 21st century, yet I often found myself lightly retracing the scar between my middle and ring fingers from clutching my keys tightly while I walked home “just in case”. I wish she had told me in those letters that I was already walking violence.
Before my mom’s life altering diagnosis, I had never stopped to ponder upon what it means to be “Patricia” or how the starlets from the 1920’s suit the name equally as well as I do. I recall my dad sitting next to me on the corduroy couch and handing me a brand new copy of “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” and flipping through the roughly textured pages. This newfound need for self reflection made me find myself taking long ventures outside. Never before had I found myself going to my backyard to notice the small yellow flowers that grew quaintly in the cracks of my slide walk. I returned outside day after day, always finding those same yellow flowers, untouched and unshaken by harsh florida rain, always growing. There were days where i yearned to become like those flowers so that I could just “be” and my “being” would be a simple and indisputable fact of the universe. Sitting on the putrid corduroy couch, I would find an inexplicable amount of understanding from shutting a book closed after reading through it in one sitting. I was often filled with quiet resentment, present and unrelenting, as I yearned to become a character in the books I so eagerly devoured. Everyone in “The Great Gatsby” simply loved Daisy just because; no clever man ever tried analyzing her and telling her why she was the way she was.
Sometimes the implications of the rough corduroy became too much to bear and the indented lines on my skin seemed to pierce like tiny daggers. On days like these, I would sit at the foot of my moms bed; I found it interesting to make a circle with my twelve year old hands around her wrist, not understanding what the harrowing smallness of her wrist implied. I tried to remind myself of the little yellow flowers, and how they were proof that there is always enough quiet peace in the world to just grow. Oftentimes on days like these my tears would sting like a splash of seawater, yet no tears could ever seem to fall.
Being forced to do a majority of my growing in a hospital seems traumatic at a glance, and it was, yet the situation managed to teach me more than words can say. My time in the hospital was spent grieving the inevitable loss of my mom, while now I grieve for the girl I was before her illness. This interval feels like two momentous glances in a prosaically mundane mirror. Quiet glances and gentle words from nurses provided an unspeakable amount ot comfort, and within the walls of the hospital I learned what it was like to completely doubt my own existence. I learned what thoughts of meaninglessness feel like, as well as the deep satisfaction gained from shutting them down. In this room, I learned to appreciate quintessential teen life and what it feels like to discover one “Mitski” song that contains the entire universe. Overall, I learned that just like the little yellow flowers and the flag in the star spangled banner, I am unrelenting and most of all, still here.
The silence of my family terrified me half to death; never before could I imagine us maintaining this code of silence for so long, and never had I heard a silence so deafening— enough silence to hear myself growing. It is rather strange to actively recognize that one is growing, as this feels like a fact only supposed to be recognized by those around me, so that they might bring up my growth on some distant Monday over an afternoon coffee. Voices shaking, my family would only speak to announce the arrival of a nurse or doctor. Constrained within the walls of this unrelenting room, I recall hearing my soul expand until it was too large for the body in which it was contained. A newfound sense of self was filling me like oil fills an ocean after a spill. This often resulted in me doing nothing for days on end, as nothing felt worth doing. These days, I found myself trying to grow closer and closer to the crayon-clad letters my mom wrote me in preschool, which are so much smaller than her body and my body and our bodies. When she wrote them, she wasn't thinking about what it would mean for me to grow up a girl in the 21st century, yet I often found myself lightly retracing the scar between my middle and ring fingers from clutching my keys tightly while I walked home “just in case”. I wish she had told me in those letters that I was already walking violence.
Before my mom’s life altering diagnosis, I had never stopped to ponder upon what it means to be “Patricia” or how the starlets from the 1920’s suit the name equally as well as I do. I recall my dad sitting next to me on the corduroy couch and handing me a brand new copy of “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” and flipping through the roughly textured pages. This newfound need for self reflection made me find myself taking long ventures outside. Never before had I found myself going to my backyard to notice the small yellow flowers that grew quaintly in the cracks of my slide walk. I returned outside day after day, always finding those same yellow flowers, untouched and unshaken by harsh florida rain, always growing. There were days where i yearned to become like those flowers so that I could just “be” and my “being” would be a simple and indisputable fact of the universe. Sitting on the putrid corduroy couch, I would find an inexplicable amount of understanding from shutting a book closed after reading through it in one sitting. I was often filled with quiet resentment, present and unrelenting, as I yearned to become a character in the books I so eagerly devoured. Everyone in “The Great Gatsby” simply loved Daisy just because; no clever man ever tried analyzing her and telling her why she was the way she was.
Sometimes the implications of the rough corduroy became too much to bear and the indented lines on my skin seemed to pierce like tiny daggers. On days like these, I would sit at the foot of my moms bed; I found it interesting to make a circle with my twelve year old hands around her wrist, not understanding what the harrowing smallness of her wrist implied. I tried to remind myself of the little yellow flowers, and how they were proof that there is always enough quiet peace in the world to just grow. Oftentimes on days like these my tears would sting like a splash of seawater, yet no tears could ever seem to fall.
Being forced to do a majority of my growing in a hospital seems traumatic at a glance, and it was, yet the situation managed to teach me more than words can say. My time in the hospital was spent grieving the inevitable loss of my mom, while now I grieve for the girl I was before her illness. This interval feels like two momentous glances in a prosaically mundane mirror. Quiet glances and gentle words from nurses provided an unspeakable amount ot comfort, and within the walls of the hospital I learned what it was like to completely doubt my own existence. I learned what thoughts of meaninglessness feel like, as well as the deep satisfaction gained from shutting them down. In this room, I learned to appreciate quintessential teen life and what it feels like to discover one “Mitski” song that contains the entire universe. Overall, I learned that just like the little yellow flowers and the flag in the star spangled banner, I am unrelenting and most of all, still here.
//
Patricia Quimby-Moro is a high-school student from Miami, Fl. She has been writing for as long as she can remember, and spends most of her days reading Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, or Murakami. Her writing is largely inspired by the growing experience she underwent during her mother’s battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, as well as her experiences with grief. Her writing largely follows the themes of aging, love, and death, and all the momentous experiences and moments in between. She hopes to one day become a professor of English literature, and a published author.
Patricia Quimby-Moro is a high-school student from Miami, Fl. She has been writing for as long as she can remember, and spends most of her days reading Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, or Murakami. Her writing is largely inspired by the growing experience she underwent during her mother’s battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, as well as her experiences with grief. Her writing largely follows the themes of aging, love, and death, and all the momentous experiences and moments in between. She hopes to one day become a professor of English literature, and a published author.