Visit

My friend started tearing as soon as we left mum's room together. I handed him a tissue and placed a hand on his back. He said he had struggled hard to contain his tears and to keep up a conversation with my mum. But seeing her like this, in the state she is now, was very painful, he said.

My friend has seen my mum on several occasions throughout the years, and in a way he saw in my mum a reflection of his own mother, who too was diagnosed with cancer several years back. He knows what it's like to see your own mother dramatically loose so much weight, he understands the heart-wrenching pain of seeing your own mother hanging on the edge, tittering so close to death...

He messaged me the day of the surgery to say he was coming to visit, but i was so distraught I did not reply immediately. Just as I was about to write to answer him, I got a phone call, announcing he somehow managed to find his way to my mum's ward and room. I was at home at the time, resting and doing some work (need to update and submit my thesis before the deadline next week...), but I rushes to the hospital and as soon I got there gave him a big, big hug. It's been such a long time. On the way there, I smiled to myself and was touched to tears that he had come all this way to see me. And it was not the first time, for when I lost my dad, he arrived within days to spend time with me. A true friend.

We've not seen one another for almost two years, but he avidly keeps up with my blog and so knows well what I'm going through. And it was later revealed he cut short a holiday in Japan to drop by Taiwan to check up on me, making me feel even more touched. I suspected when I got his message he was visiting that perhaps he was partly here on a recon mission commissioned by my ex. And I was right. Being unable to reach me, my ex has been going through various channels and contacting people I know to get ahold of news of me. I'm flattered and touched, but am a little unsure why he thinks of me so much. Could it be...?

My friend and I went out to dinner, and we caught up ours lives and chatted like old times. Much of the conversation initially focused on my mum, and I could see when I described her ordeal and what we went through in the past two months or so, his eyes turned red again. But we also laughed and talked about other things. We went back to the hospital, where I wanted to spend a little bit more time with mum and massage her sore arms and legs. She kept on telling me to go and enjoy myself, and reluctantly I did, and was glad that at least for this night I did not leave the hospital alone or with a heavy heart.

The carer who came to be with mum does a great job, and mum says she's very attentive and responds whenever she calls her, even in the middle of the night. I am somewhat relieved, for it takes a great weight on my shoulders, especially in this crucial period of time when mum cannot do much by herself and needs constant attention. The fact the carer is another woman helps a lot, for there are things that as a boy, and as her son, mum feels terribly embarrassed to have to ask me to help her with.

We went to a bar and drink a bit, first time in a long time when I took out time to relax, for normally I'd just head home and collapse from exhaustion. But with my friend here I was somehow energised and we kept on chatting and reminisced the past times when we traveled together or met up in the most random of places in the world. He stayed the night even, and we kept on chatting and watching videos till three in the morning...

And I had to get up again at six to be in time to see the doctors pay their morning visits!