Pacemaker
Thursday, 25.10.2007. 2151 hours.
My aunt is going on the pacemaker tomorrow. She fainted and her heart just stopped beating.
When mami called and I spoke to her, she sounded so different. So weak. So frail. So unlike the woman I so vividly remembered from my youth.
She was so vivacious, so energetic. Always so full of vitality, spirit. She always looked and acted way younger than her 62 years. Even last month, when I spoke to her, she still had that spark. That laughter in her voice.
How different that now she sounded like she was at death's door already, and I felt so lost for words. How to comfort her? How to make her smile? Her husband passed away when I was 18 from kidney failure. Her youngest boy is only a year older than I. She worries about him still. What can I say to make her feel better?
Here is a woman of strength, who still managed to build a substantially successful business and send her 3 children to Australia on a Form 3 education, who became Lion's Club President in a male-dominated small town.
Who stood up for her daughter when she felt her daughter was being put down, and she needed her. Who put up with me when I visited my grandmother alone.
I feel bereft already. Mami always did say I was more like her sister than I was like her. Rooster women, she said. Rooster women were strong. Rooster women were ambitious. Rooster women had fire. Rooster women don't give up.
I sure hope so. I pray to God that's true. She's too young. Not like this anyway. Not like this.
My aunt is going on the pacemaker tomorrow. She fainted and her heart just stopped beating.
When mami called and I spoke to her, she sounded so different. So weak. So frail. So unlike the woman I so vividly remembered from my youth.
She was so vivacious, so energetic. Always so full of vitality, spirit. She always looked and acted way younger than her 62 years. Even last month, when I spoke to her, she still had that spark. That laughter in her voice.
How different that now she sounded like she was at death's door already, and I felt so lost for words. How to comfort her? How to make her smile? Her husband passed away when I was 18 from kidney failure. Her youngest boy is only a year older than I. She worries about him still. What can I say to make her feel better?
Here is a woman of strength, who still managed to build a substantially successful business and send her 3 children to Australia on a Form 3 education, who became Lion's Club President in a male-dominated small town.
Who stood up for her daughter when she felt her daughter was being put down, and she needed her. Who put up with me when I visited my grandmother alone.
I feel bereft already. Mami always did say I was more like her sister than I was like her. Rooster women, she said. Rooster women were strong. Rooster women were ambitious. Rooster women had fire. Rooster women don't give up.
I sure hope so. I pray to God that's true. She's too young. Not like this anyway. Not like this.
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