Two years ago my mom fallen ill. She hadn’t been exactly healthy for a while. But that time, it had gotten so bad that she had to be rushed to the ICU. The first few days, she was mostly unconscious. When she did wake up, she would be too delirious to make sense. One day when I visited her, she was awake, she looked at me, and said that she was done cooking a meal so I should go eat. She didn’t even aware where she was. She didn’t know what has happened to her. But the minute she saw her kids, her instinct was to care for them. Even when she was in pain, even when she got a whole lot of surviving to do. Her first priority was always her daughter.
It was really heartbreaking to see the strongest woman I know gotten so weak. The woman, who loved to take control and being in charge of everything, was being unconscious and lost control of her own body. It was only a few week but it the longest time I didn’t properly talk to my mom. Usually I would call her everyday before or after work. We would talk about something exciting like workplace drama, or even something as boring as what we eat that day because we genuinely wanted to know as our mutual love for food. Every once in a while she would ask how my friends or colleagues were doing. As she knew them by name even though she never met them.
Eventually, she got better and discharged from the ICU. The moment I could call her, and hear her voice of complete sentences, I realised that this was the things that matter. A lot of other things that I consistently worried about, it did not matter. That task that I have been pulling my hair out for not knowing how to do, it did not matter. Or that coworker who was annoyingly unreliable but surprisingly a good kiss ass, it did not matter. Or that friend that didn’t remember my birthday, it did not matter. That guy that I liked didn’t like me back, it did not matter. This did not mean that I stop worrying it, it just meant that I worry less about it. Because what matter is her. As long as
Then, a year later, she passed away.
And the whole “nothing else matter” thing took an entirely different meaning. Because I can’t share it with her.