When I visited my mother in the intensive care ward on Christmas Day, she insisted I head off and celebrate properly. After a sombre meal, my friend’s call brought a glimmer of hope
The year 2012 had been a long and difficult one. One of three, in fact. It had been three years since my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer and, ever since, I, my dad and older brother had been living in the hospital-filled limbo so familiar to families of cancer patients – life dictated by chemo cycles, the endless bedside waiting, the guilty mental preparation for the inevitable.
Christmas in the Kalia household had always been a major occasion, though, and something to look forward to. Even though we are Hindus – our roots are in India – we had embraced the festival’s feasting and gift-giving. My mum would usually invite her two siblings and their ever-expanding families for turkey with all the trimmings, a meal she would spend days preparing while my kitchen-inept dad would look on in awe, faithfully laying the table and clearing dishes. That table would hold at least 15 others, all laughing and stuffing themselves – the usual disagreements that characterised family gatherings strangely absent. Since she had fallen ill, though, Christmas had morphed from a day of celebration of our big immigrant family’s resilient togetherness to a day fearful of absence. Which Christmas would be Mum’s last, I would wonder, and how could I make that one count more than the others?
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