In Memory of a Mother | Part 7

June, 2020, after 19 years of gradual debilitation resulted from her total disregard of her diabetes, she finally agreed to accept surgical and medical intervention, because her right eye could barely detect light. That was when her family knew that her left eye had already gone completely blind a long time ago. She hadn't uttered a single word about it before, remaining steadfast to her faith that "the Master" would heal her if she broke sweat to be a "perfect" believer.

And that was when her fast, final death march was started. No turning back, and she didn't shed a single tear.

After repeated surgeries, the vision in the right eye was fairly prevented from further deterioration. Then she had to undergo subsequent minor surgeries regularly, for which she needed to be transferred to a superior hospital again and again. Her son was staying by her side, for she couldn't see anything immediately after a surgery; she could painstakingly walk only by clutching her son's arm, following his instructions, and trudging with extreme caution every step of way.

November, 2020, it was an early morning. While waiting for the car transferring her to the hospital, she fell down from a small step no more than 2 inches high, and because she had severe osteoporosis, that fall instantly caused dislocation of the left hip joint. One simple tumble and she could never get off the bed ever again.

The dislocation set off dangerous chain reactions. Even though she narrowly survived the life-or-death orthopedic surgery, she couldn't get up to perform the necessary rehabilitation exercises even once. Thus, it was highly possible that detached blood clots in the veins would cause obstruction or embolism in arteries, leading to the stoppage of blood in her lungs and heart, which, in the end, was the direct cause of her death.

After her withering body had been tethered to the sickbed, the accelerating development of multiple organ failure resulted in incessant fecal incontinence. Her son and her husband needed to be staying beside her all the while, always repeating the procedure of taking off her diaper, cleansing her skin, using the ointment, putting on a new diaper, and laundering the contaminated sheets and trousers.

More often than not, her son had to hold with his hands a diaper close to the anal region, for whatever food or drink she took in, a stream just kept gurgling out, and he had no enough time and energy to repeat that entire procedure over and over.

A sense of appreciation took hold of the son all of a sudden. He realized it was his mother, not the other way around, who was freeing him from any possible guilt, regret, shame or contrition right then, by offering him one last chance to take care of her one last time. He was reliving happy moments in a flashback to his mother's life in 1988: Wasn't it the very scene where the mother was breast-feeding her baby, changing his diapers and wiping off his feces?

He'd had grave doubts as to whether the cliché was real that it was nothing but love that would sit with us and carry us through the dark hours of our lives.

It was all real.