A mother's grief



From: Remember your Self

A MOTHER’ S GRIEF


Patricia was ill. She slept on the top floor. As always, I was lying in my bed downstairs in the living room. Fortunately we had an automatic door opener annex intercom. ‘Fortunately’ I say, because we had only had it installed a little while before.  Not too long ago, every time I needed Johan or one of the children, I had had to draw their attention in very different ways. Initially I would call out and later I used a little bell. When they were upstairs doing their homework while listening to music, that did not do the trick anymore.
Especially at times like these, that Patricia was ill, the intercom was vital. Johan had gone to work. Erwin and Gijs had left for school. Patricia was still asleep because she had a later start. Obviously she had woken up. I could hear her voice from the attic room through the intercom in the living room, a bit weepy: "Mum, I feel so sick." When I asked her if she wanted to come downstairs and lie in bed with me, she cried even harder.
"I cannot get out of bed, mum, I am feeling too unwell." If she said that, it must have been serious. I have never felt as powerless as at that moment. The fact that I could not go out shopping for clothes with my daughter annoyed me a lot, to send your child off with some strange, new home helper to get his jabs, was sad. But this, a sick child calling out for me, I felt really heart-broken. I could not go upstairs. Even though I often managed to get a lot further than one would have suspected thanks to my willpower, this I could not do. I cried so much, it felt like I opened a door, which I had kept safely closed until then, as if it was swept open wide. A floodgate, which the stream of tears of many situations had been pounding into until it gave way. That was what happened. Streams of tears. Tears of a mother who wished so much she were a mother with a healthy body.

Realisatie: Numaga-Design