June’s Deepest Dive

A month ago I watched a Netflix film called The Deepest Breath. It’s a perfect analogy for the darkest part of June’s treatment. A feeling I’ve been unable to put into words. It continues to haunt me for reasons I want others to understand, and for reasons I want to forget.

For days after watching the film, I could not shake the feeling it gave me. I sat alone with the feeling and when I tried to describe it to others, to not be so alone with the feeling, I fell short. I decided to let it go, but it kept creeping up on me. While picking up toys off the living room floor or standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. It’s addictive, so I’d pick up more toys. I’d hand wash dishes out of the dirty dishwasher, just to stay, standing, in the feeling a bit longer. I relate to it. I like it. It brings me back to when June was alive because it’s a feeling I experienced so often. I wonder if I’m truly ready to let it go.

I don’t relate to the desire to dive. I can’t hold my breath underwater for more than a short five seconds. I don’t like swimming. I’m fearful of the water. A doggy paddle is my best stroke.

The feeling I am talking about is one I imagine the free divers have every time they commit to diving the line. I’m referring to fear, but not just any fear. It’s a familiar fear. More specifically, it is the fear of going to the edge of death and then coming back, just as the free divers do in the film. Just as June did throughout her treatment.

“The way I’ve heard it described,” the clinic nurse said to me before June’s first stem cell transplant, “is that they bring them to the edge of death and then slowly pull them back.”

“Oh.” I said. This was entirely too much to contemplate. “June has to come back,” I said.

A feeling of knowing overcomes me as I watch a free diver valiantly swim and then glide into the depths of the ocean. I feel the pain their parents must experience every time their child takes the deepest breath. Three-hundred and fifty-seven feet without an oxygen tank, a voluntary weight in hand helping to pull the diver deeper into the sea. They dive along a cable because it’s easy to become disoriented. Holding their breath for more than three minutes, they kick until the darkness disguised as lightness carries them to the bottom of the weighted cable. The devil disguised as God. To the edge of death and back.

Over and over. These divers choose to do this. Their parents, if asked, would choose they don’t. Now, I choose to watch them. It is reminiscent of watching June. The terror. The anxiety. The perpetual panic. Throughout treatment, I watched June brought to the edge of death and return. Much like the diver, she changed every time she sank into the abyss and resurfaced. It was notable upon her return. Her eyes dimmer. Her smile weaker. Physiologically she was more disabled than before she went. Before she went in for surgery, went in for another round of chemo, went in for stem cell transplant, went in for radiation mapping. Every dive deeper. Every dive more dangerous. The damage irreversible. June did not choose this. We, as June’s parents, chose this for her. We lowered the cable. Treatment disguised as the cure. To the edge of death and back.

I wish I knew where June went during her dives. What her mind told her every time she went under anesthesia, every time a doctor cut into her on a table. Did she go to a space filled with darkness or lightness? Was the edge of death peaceful like the divers described? Was it quiet? A place beyond pain? Where did the pain stop and euphoria begin? A line I cannot delineate because I was not beside her during her deepest dive. I was waiting on the surface. I am only June’s mom. I could only watch her take the deepest breath. I couldn’t take it with her or for her, as every parent at one time or another wishes they could.

As June’s mom (Mama to her) I watched June take the deepest dive. I cheered her on. I waited on the surface with my hands tied counting the seconds on the clock. Praying she would resurface. The medical responders diving to meet her on her way back. Their hands also tied. She’d have to do this alone. For herself. I’d dip my face into the water in anticipation of her return. The water was blurry and the salt stung my eyes. Did I bring goggles? Meaningless thoughts as the panic set in as the moments slowly ticked by. Nothing I could do to speed up time or change the outcome.

Before each dive, before handing her off to a stranger disguised as a nurse, I kissed her goodbye like it was the last time. I’d hold her warm little face in my hands. I’d inhale her sweet breath. We’d lock eyes. Then I’d wait. At the bedside. In the waiting room. On our living room floor cradling her lifeless body. From the surface, I’d wonder every time, was she coming back or had she gone to the edge and beyond?