She let the phone ring for some more time, worried that her mother might come rushing only to hear it stop ringing.
No answer at the other end.
Her thoughts moved uneasily to the last time she had spoken with her. When she had heard her hypochondriac mother sound sick, she had promised to call her the next day to check up on her. But the week had pounced on her with an agenda of its own and she never got around to make that call. Today the guilt came rushing back. She hung up the phone with an unease that she could not shrug off. Half an hour later, she called to be greeted by empty silence again. Her uneasiness went up a notch again, but she consoled herself that her mother must have gone out.
The next day she gave a call as soon as the time difference allowed her to. It was still early morning and she knew her mother should be at home to take her call. Still no answer at home. She then hastily went around looking for her mother's mobile number and kicked herself for not thinking about that the previous day. Just as she was almost about to hang up the call, she heard the faint tinny "hello" cut across the static. Was she imagining or did her mother sound feeble?
With full of trepidation and alarm, the words came rushing out.....
-"Where are you? I have been calling home since yesterday"
- "I am not at home."
-"Where are you then?"
The syllables hung heavily in the air.
- I have been at the hospital since mid-week".
Anger and guilt competed within her, momentarily robbing her of her speech.
-"Why did you not tell me?"
-"Well, I did not want to alarm you."
She shook her head at the disbelief flooding through her. Her mother had not called her. She had not let her know that she was hospitalized in some misplaced sense of protecting her offspring.
She emptied her head of conflicting thoughts and brought her attention to the matter at hand and hastily inquired about her mother's health. As she heard her mother recount the days leading up to her hospitalization, she was slowly eaten by the helplessness of the situation. All those sleepless nights that her mother spent nursing her through every single childhood ailment of hers and yet today her mother was on her own relying on the generosity and benevolence of her neighbours and friends. Even though her mother had now recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital soon, what if the scenario repeats again?
This is pretty much the situation with most expatriates who have family behind and thousands of miles between them......every son and daughter's nightmare that they might not be there for their parents when the need arises. In her case, she did not even have siblings or extended family to take care of her mother. The choices she had made with her kids in mind has robbed her mother of her own daughter. Uprooting her mother from her zone of comfort had not worked before - even before her visa period had run out, her mother was itching to go back home to her own familiar surroundings. Her mind raced to the alternatives that could be considered, but each option sounded temporary and less hopeful to her tired self.
Is it not true, when it rains, it always pours........yet another situation to deal with, she hoped she would find the endurance to survive the latest development. Any semblance at normalcy seems to rush out of the window lately. She promised her mother she would call the next day and with a heavy heart, hung up her phone. She knew she would make that call.......never again would she push it to the back burner.......the umbilical cord relationship still reigns the supreme in the end.
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