Family

Family means a big deal to me. It should to you too.

Everyone is born into a family. Whether or not the family is of blood relation is another matter. Something could have happened during birth that orphaned a baby. Nevertheless, the baby still has a family, either in an orphanage or with foster or best of all adopted by a good couple.

I am grateful to be born into a complete family. I had my grandparents, my parents, and siblings. One of my grandfathers died young from an accident just about a year after I was born. I had met him but never have any memory of him holding me in his arms. How would I remember when I was hardly a year old? My other grandparents lived through for a long time and died of old age.

Last year, my mother passed away painfully in the hospital bed. Some say that she had lived her years as she has already passed seventy. However, I have many people to blame for my mother’s suffering. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in year 2016. I was devastated because we have been told through mainstream media that cancer means total loss of hope. The only cure for cancer is through inexorable suffering. I thought I was going to lose my mother within the year and it broke my heart.

She was advised to go through the standard procedures to supposedly cure cancer; surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and all the follow up checks. Everything was done according to the medical books. She went back to the same hospital for her routine checks. Somehow, medical officers there do not seem to be experts in this field. They may be specialists on paper but they seriously lack sensitivity. Even the slightest change in the physical appearance of a cancer patient can be a serious call.

My mother was having skin problems all her life. But this particular skin disorder was something she never had before. Her skin had many pinkish patches and was not itchy at all. She did ask the doctors during her routine checks but the doctors did not take it seriously. Then, she was complaining of her bloated stomach. It was so bloated that she looked like she was five months pregnant and when pressed on, it is actually quite hard. The doctor just brushed off her concern and told her that it is loose muscles due to old age. Every little symptom is her body crying out loud but no medical officer seems to be able to read the message.

In less than a week, she was hospitalized to remove excess liquid in her abdomen. Then, she was admitted into the specialist hospital that she frequented for her routine checks. She only stayed there for two nights… Then she was gone forever. Words cannot describe the pain that she had to endure. There is not a single way for me to describe the agony for us to send her off, not in the comfort of her own bed in her own home. There were so many questions in my head that are left unanswered till this date.

Yesterday was her first death anniversary in the lunar calendar. We bought all her favourite foods for prayers. I am still asking these same questions.

Why the doctors did not pick up any of the symptoms during her routine checks?

Why the doctors did not tell her of the seriousness of her condition when she was first hospitalized?

Why the doctors did not tell us to bring her home one day before she left us eternally?

All the frustration above did not bother me as much as the things I should have done but did not do as a daughter.

I should have taken leave from work to go for the routine checks with her.

I should have asked the doctors of the seriousness of her condition.

I should never agree to her admission into the specialist hospital.

Every time I think about my mother, I feel remorse. Some things are just irreplaceable. There are so many things I should have done but did not do when she was around. One year had passed, there is no turning back. Life still goes on. I come to realize that life is too short, so live with courage to do whatever that needs to be done.

Take care of your family like there is no tomorrow.

 

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.    

Anthony Brandt, American composer, academic, and writer, 1961-present