MORE THAN A SON
“Boris collapsed in his bath this morning and has been admitted at the Cantonal Hospital”, was the WhatsApp message I received from Agnes, my son Boris’ wife, one morning as I left a meeting.
Boris was the son every mother dreams of having — so confident and reassuring. I remember when, at age five, he was sent by his carer to the nearby grocery store to get tomato paste. He believed that it was from the shop they usually visited in the city and walked all the way there, crossing the motorway twice and coming back proudly with a tomato paste tube in his shirt pocket.
That morning, when I got the message from Agnes, I was not particularly worried. “It must be something trivial, maybe something he ate?” I thought.
But it was not. He was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism — blood clots in his lungs. All attempts to dissolve the clots through the use of medication had failed, and a specialist had decided that the clots should be removed surgically. After the surgery, I visit him in hospital.
As I sit by his bedside at the Intensive Care Unit, I watch my son Boris quiet for the first time in the 48 years of his life. This is not the Boris I know, the bustling, and caring Boris, with a keen sense of humour, always commenting on my clothes, my hairdo, my makeup and everything else. There he is lying down and in an induced coma, after a major operation to remove the blood clots from his lungs.
“But how could this happen?” I think to myself. Boris, the child who was never sick, even as a baby. Boris, who, true to his Zodiac sign “Leo” epitomized the strength and resilience of our family; a PhD graduate, a black-belt judo champion. It does not make sense to me. This must be a bad dream.
I look at all the equipment to which various parts of his body are connected. First, the monitors that beep incessantly and I keep my eyes fixed on the graphs, for some time, while listening anxiously to the beeps. Their patterns are regular and I try to understand what each one is monitoring. They remind me of films I had watched with Boris, such as “Flatliners”, and for a moment, I am gripped with fear. What if the graphs suddenly flatten out?
A nurse comes in to check on the ECMO machine. He looks up at me, and seeing the anxiety in my eyes tries to comfort me:
“He is strong and should do well. We are doing our best.”
“God bless you,” I reply.
The ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation equipment (ECMO) is the machine that supports the body for a period of time to allow the heart and/or lungs time to rest. It is frightening to look at, as the tubes which take the blood to and from the heart are passed through an external machine that performs the functions of the heart and lungs. I observe this as I note the distinct blue colour of the blood from the veins and compared it to the red colour of the blood from the arteries. “A review lesson in Biology”, I think.
As I look around, I observe that the sombre walls of the ward have been decorated by Agnes, with family photos and homemade “get well soon” cards from his two children K’Tusha and Taio. There is also the Rosary I had bought from the Monastery in Basel, hanging on the bed-stand, together with a medal of St Bernadette of Lourdes, which my sister brought from London.
We had a staunch religious upbringing and my mother who played a strong role in bringing up my children, after my marriage broke up, always taught us that “God answers prayers”. And now I need God more than ever before, so we are praying profusely. A number of Evangelists and prayer leaders had been recommended to us and I call them one by one to offer prayers. So while holding the phone close to him, I touch him as we pray. I reassure myself after each prayer that Boris would recover.
“The Lord who raised Lazarus from the dead will heal your son”, one of the prayer leaders assures me.
I am optimistic. Boris, who at the tender age of six, when my marriage broke up reassured me that he would take care of me. I can still hear his voice resounding: “Mum, don’t worry, we will make it. I will take care of you”, he told me. True to his word, he spent all his life caring for me, responding to my every need.
As I leave the hospital, I think: “I am still alive. He made a promise to me, so how could anything bad happen to him?”
But something did happen to him. He passed away a week later.
At the funeral, I listened to a bible reading from 1 Corinthians 15.
“O death, where is thy sting?”
“What a question?” I thought. “Yes, death does sting.”
Learning to live without Boris has not been easy. However, I am comforted by the precious gifts he left behind — his two children to whom I can now channel my affection. His candle is rekindled and continues to burn….
