Then, a week ago, I found myself near her neighborhood. On impulse, I stopped by her house. The door creaked open, and I stepped inside. The rooms were bare, stripped of the warmth I remembered. No familiar scent of detergent, no hum of her old radio. Her belongings were gone. The emptiness echoed with abandonment. I assumed she had gone to stay with my aunt. Still hurt, I convinced myself she was avoiding me, and I decided to give her time.
Yesterday, her number flashed on my phone. My heart leapt. Finally, I thought, she was ready to apologize. I answered, rehearsing the cold words I would deliver. But it wasn’t her voice.
“This is Nurse Tran,” the woman said gently. “Your mother has been very ill. She didn’t want us to call you, but her condition has become critical.”
The world tilted. Ill? Critical? My mother had been suffering for weeks, and I hadn’t known. She had refused to let them contact me, insisting she didn’t want to burden me while I cared for my newborn. Even in her pain, she thought of me first.
For illustrative purposes only
I rushed to the hospital, my chest tight with guilt. When I entered her room, I froze. She lay pale and fragile, her body diminished, her breath shallow. The woman who had once carried me on her back, who had worked herself to the bone, was now a shadow of herself.
I took her hand, the same hand I had rejected, and pressed it to my cheek. Tears blurred my vision. “Mom, please forgive me,” I whispered. “I was cruel. I didn’t mean it. Please, don’t leave me like this.”
Her lips curved faintly, her voice barely audible. “A mother can never hate her child. Now that you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
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