Goodbye

When I was a kid, mum used to ask me the most ridiculous of questions. She would ask me what I would do if I knew she was dying.

She'd want to know how I'd cope with losing her as a mother, and she'd want me to be prepared for her death when I was only 8 years old. Whilst other kids were growing up on cartoons and video games, I was growing up in a household that told its members to prepare for death.

Survival, she said, only belonged to those who were fit.

Of course, as a child, I would call her a silly woman. What sort of mother asks her kids what they'd do if she was dying? What sort of mother would want to hear the plans of her 8 year old in dealing with the loss of a loved one? What sort of a parent expects her child to be able to cope with a death in the family when other grown-ups many years older couldn't do the same? Even some of the bravest adults I know find it difficult to deal with death, let alone a kid who has just begun to memorize his multiplication table.

She had the PERFECT timing for such questions; whether I was having fun playing board games or happily banging some tunes on the piano, she'd pull me aside and ask me the same question all over again. She'd ask me what I'd do if she was dying.

I never gave her an answer not because I didn't think about it but because I really didn't want to answer it. I wasn't prepared for it. I was prepared for my exams, my piano classes, prepared to harvest the vegetables from the veggie patch that I made, prepared to take in the laundry when the sky didn't approve of sunshine... prepared to do anything but give her an answer

I just told myself that it would never happen, not for a very very long time to come.

After all, that's what normally happens in the cartoons that I watched on the telly. "Death of a family member" was just another phrase that never really got used in daily conversations.

One cold night I was playing scrabble with my cousins and it was such fun. I had a very good command of English and had no qualms about acing the game. Then out of the blue she did it again, she called me up to her room and asked me what I would do if she was dying. I was so annoyed at her estranged behaviour that I became erratic. I started to shout at her calling her a stupid mother and I started to cry. I started to hurl insults at her and tell her what an evil person she is, to always surround me with the notion of death even when I'm having the best of times with my cousins; even when I was in the capacity to smile.

She did her motherly gesture; smiling at me, she called me close and gave me a hug. I continued to cry and rant my unhappiness to her until I fell asleep, waking up in the morning only to find that the space on the bed next to me was empty.

That night was the last night I had a hug from mum. The next day, the 8 year old boy who had previously wanted bad things to happen to his mother got his wish. She was sent to the hospital because she was "sick", so to speak, and I never saw her again.

Throughout the course of her "treatment", I was never allowed visits. I would buy her breakfast and ask my aunt to bring it over to her in the hospital before I went off for school, and that was the best I could do. Flowers were not permitted; hospital policy, my relatives said. I believed them with the innocence of a boy, not sensing that they were hiding a great many things from me.

Not sensing that my mother was on a cocktail of antidepressants. Not sensing that some dumb nurse would decide to take a nap and leave my mother unattended in her ward. Not knowing that in the absence of proper medical supervision and while she was high on the drugs she would later hang herself.

But that's not what the relatives told me; they said she was very ill and died, as means of protecting me. I was only told the truth about what really happened to my mum 8 years later.

I was 10 when I saw my mother being put into a wooden box and taken away.

What would I do if I knew mum was dying? The question came running back into my head as I held the bouquet of roses in my hand and followed the procession; even before the whole realisation about “losing-your-mother-to-mysterious-circumstances” had a chance to sink in.

I hadn't thought about it hard enough but at that very moment I realised I had known the answer to her question all this while.

I'd give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, I'd say sorry for all the bad things I did and the things I didn't do, I'd treat her to a good meal and take her to the places she'd like to see before she left the world, and give her the love she'd need to prepare herself for the inevitable...

But most importantly I'd want to say goodbye to her. I'd want to tell her how much I loved her and how much I'd miss her when she was gone.

I never managed to tell mum the answer to her question.

I never even got the chance to say goodbye.