"I will always be there for you. I hope you know." Helen M.Exley
There are many stories told of a mother's love. Here are two.
1) An uneducated 46 year old Malaysian mother shows us how to cheerfully embrace the parenting vocation. Widowed 10 years ago, she raised her two children with an unshaken resolve. Her 24 year old daughter graduated from university recently. She hopes that her 14 year old son will also graduate, in time. Doing a cleaning job in an Institution, she works on shifts from 7-30AM to 11-30PM, and on alternate days, from 7-30AM to 3-30PM, not availing of holidays, to earn overtime wages. To save money for her children she walks to work, instead of boarding a bus or local train. As she recovers from breast-cancer-surgery, she speaks of her attitude to life. It is not the problems of life that matter, but how we react to them, she muses. If you look at a situation as a problem, she reasons, it will assume the dimensions of one. Rather, if you look at it as an opportunity, you will find avenues, she assures us. Cheerfully, she adds, that she has no demands or complaints. She is at peace, happy and encouraged by good friends. For a woman who has not been to school, she packs much wisdom into her words.
2) A 5 month old premature daughter with malformed limbs tests her mother's love. The mother does not fail. The daughter is now 16 and does not stop praising her mother. What would have happened to her, without her mother? She shudders at the question. Tending to every need, because she could not help herself, her mother cared for her through every doctor visit, every surgery and every ordeal for 16 years. Now she moves around like a normal person. Grieving for the sacrifices her mother made, she admits that things were extremely tough with financial stress compounding their woes, after her father deserted the family. But her mother would not let that come in the way of medical attention her daughter needed. She juggled part time jobs with full time nursing of a helpless child.
Dear Uncle Ignatius,
ReplyDeleteA request. I would like to hear from you more on how parents should respond especially when their children are sick.
How can they support each other and their child? What should the role of the grand parents be? How can they better support the parents in this case?
This question was in my mind when my own nephew was down with dengue and the doctors gave up hope as his situation worsened but then he came back from the brink. for the past few weeks as I saw a parishioner's grand child suffer from dengue and how the entire family tried to cope with this, this question resurfaced.
When I saw this post on your blog, I thought I will ask you to share your experiences on situations like this.