“Who is the patient among you?”
The oncologist threw a hasty glance and the patient, my mother, was overjoyed. My parents and I had waited for two hours before being ushered into the oncologist’s room. I replied to the doctor, but soon the questions were directed toward my mother, who was still joyful for the doctor’s compliments on her health, not realizing that it was his usual trick to pull his patients up from the deep dark pit called cancer.
October 8, 2005, was not just the day that put Pakistan on the humanitarian aid map for a massive earthquake, but it also shook our lives. What appeared to be a lesion on my mother’s lower jaw turned out to be a Poorly Differentiated Squamous Cell Carcinoma in pathological findings. My father did not understand these words when he received the report. On his way back from the hospital, he stopped for his usual mile of evening walk, and that was where the prescription slipped from his pocket, only to be picked up by his friend, a radiologist by profession. It was he who broke the devastating news. No one from our family had ever had this disease, so the mere diagnosis was traumatic.
As the nation reeled from aid and an unprecedented humanitarian experience, my mother underwent surgery after surgery. A month later, when Chinooks became a familiar sight in Pakistani skies, she was back to her normal routine.
She planned the fresh décor of our new home, acquired after pursuing my self-made father for almost 26 years. Having withstood her suffering long enough, living that quarter of a century in a small house with my paternal family, the only silver lining was convincing my father for this new house.
I now believe that my mother’s comeback was largely motivated by her desire to give the house its final touches. She had done it so well that anyone who visited us in those days always left with praises, although carcinoma is not known for valuing all those admirations. The cancer, which was scrubbed off by six doctors in an operation stretching for eight hours, recurred within eight months. Before we could decide on the treatment, it had quietly moved through her veins and metastasized.
I was the first one, amongst my siblings, to know that she would not make it. I made use of my hard-core training and distantly saw her slipping away, while my family hoped against hope, day in and day out. She passed away the next August. I wrote the text of her tombstone, which summarized her struggle for a house of her own.
The oncologist threw a hasty glance and the patient, my mother, was overjoyed. My parents and I had waited for two hours before being ushered into the oncologist’s room. I replied to the doctor, but soon the questions were directed toward my mother, who was still joyful for the doctor’s compliments on her health, not realizing that it was his usual trick to pull his patients up from the deep dark pit called cancer.
October 8, 2005, was not just the day that put Pakistan on the humanitarian aid map for a massive earthquake, but it also shook our lives. What appeared to be a lesion on my mother’s lower jaw turned out to be a Poorly Differentiated Squamous Cell Carcinoma in pathological findings. My father did not understand these words when he received the report. On his way back from the hospital, he stopped for his usual mile of evening walk, and that was where the prescription slipped from his pocket, only to be picked up by his friend, a radiologist by profession. It was he who broke the devastating news. No one from our family had ever had this disease, so the mere diagnosis was traumatic.
As the nation reeled from aid and an unprecedented humanitarian experience, my mother underwent surgery after surgery. A month later, when Chinooks became a familiar sight in Pakistani skies, she was back to her normal routine.
She planned the fresh décor of our new home, acquired after pursuing my self-made father for almost 26 years. Having withstood her suffering long enough, living that quarter of a century in a small house with my paternal family, the only silver lining was convincing my father for this new house.
I now believe that my mother’s comeback was largely motivated by her desire to give the house its final touches. She had done it so well that anyone who visited us in those days always left with praises, although carcinoma is not known for valuing all those admirations. The cancer, which was scrubbed off by six doctors in an operation stretching for eight hours, recurred within eight months. Before we could decide on the treatment, it had quietly moved through her veins and metastasized.
I was the first one, amongst my siblings, to know that she would not make it. I made use of my hard-core training and distantly saw her slipping away, while my family hoped against hope, day in and day out. She passed away the next August. I wrote the text of her tombstone, which summarized her struggle for a house of her own.
From One House to Another
Rubina Shaheen
Dec 1958 - Aug 2006
I did not shed a tear when I hugged all my siblings to console them, not when I lowered her into the grave, not the following month when we gave her effects away for charity. It came years later. I had won an award in Rome, and I picked up the phone to share the news with someone I thought would be the happiest to hear the news. It was then, right there, at the Air Force Museum next to calm and peaceful Lake Bracciano, dressed up in my military ceremonials, that I realized what mothers meant.