Confession

"In all my life I have never been so miserable. This time it's really different..." I lay at my mum's bed side, as she quietly said those words to me. Words that sounded like a confession, words that really revealed how forlorn and tired she is of fighting, after all these years. I looked at her face, and she closed her eyes. From her lips escaped a soft groan of discomfort. I stroked her arm softly, hoping she can rest a bit...

We just spent a couple of hours at the hospital. Mum's vomiting has not improved, and seems to be getting worse. Whereas before, she would throw up a bit, the last two days or so, whenever she throws up, the vomit pours. Really pours out like a river. (This is a comical clip, yes, but it really is what it looks like when mum vomits...). The doctor said she needs to go for an endoscopy to see what is wrong with her bowels. But the earliest appointment is in over two weeks' time...

Can she wait that long and keep on vomiting? The doctor prescribed some medicine, and so far it has not helped. Just tonight, she vomited. Like a river again, everything came out in two, three installments. I could only stand helplessly next to her and pat her back, and ache in my heart... Nothing is staying in her stomach, which means she is absorbing very little when she is already eating very little. These days I am at a loss as to what to cook her, because she either has no appetite or just throws up what she eats... If the vomiting does not improve after tomorrow, she said she wants to check into Emergency.

There is a fear, mum and I both have it. The originating source of mum's cancer is in her colon, and we have for a while always been afraid that there is something wrong there again. Only a thorough and invasive operation will reveal what is the reason behind her vomiting, vomiting that has been going on for almost a month now...  But all this time, her weight is steadily dropping, her health is steadily declining.

I closed my eyes too, and curled up on the bed next to mum, something I've not done for a long, long time. I hoped she would rest better with someone by her side, and in a way, I too needed the warmth of a body  next to me. There is a bond and deep sense of comfort to be found in  so intimate a human contact. Especially that between a mother and a child. 

I gradually fell asleep too. Deep, deep, beautiful sleep, very unlike the ones I have been getting these days. Before I drifted away, I felt mum's hand on my hair, I felt her stroke my forehead. How comforting that was.

Softly, almost inaudibly... "The heavens see all that you are doing for me here..."

Was it a dream...? Was I dreaming? It was a beautiful dream if it was one...