just a phone call away

“Mom, I heard you're sick…”
“Yes….”
“How? ….hmmm Why? …hmmm Are you alright?.....”

Its these unclear questions I was asking my mom as I was calling her this morning to say hi, and was told by my brother that she wasn’t very well this morning.
My questions must have seemed pretty out of place, since you don’t really know why you had a stomachache or a cold or anything else, right?... But I guess what I wasn’t explicitly saying and I think she sensed was…”Mom, I’m very worried…”




You live far away from home. You don’t really get to go to her side, rub some Vicks on her, get her some tea, put a blanket over her and rub her feet. No, you just get unclear messages and the voice of your worried brother that your call might as well be bothering her resting.

Okay, it might not be pretty major, nothing to worry about. My family is there. It’ll be over the next day or perhaps even in a couple of hours. But still I just can’t help it.
I felt hopeless.

I remember some years ago, when I was living yet in another country thousands of miles away from this part of the world, and got some unclear messages that my grandmother was ill. Nyak Syik was staying with my uncle’s at that point (she moves around cities as she pleases, and I admire her strength for someone of that age), and everyone was giving me different news. One of my brothers told me, “Yeah, Mom’s gone over to Cek Lah’s cause Nyak Syik is ill, and I hear they’ve brought her to the hospital…” Very casually, yet BAMM...I froze.
It must have been pretty serious, my grandmother hates hospitals. When I called my mother, “No, its fine, everything is okay...we’ve brought her home.” And when I got my other brother on the line I was told, ‘Yeah, we’re just waiting for news whether Dad and I should come over there, I think her condition is deteriorating...” Now how would you’ve reacted?
But, Alhamdulillah everything was fine with Nyak Syik, she’d refused to eat for some reason, but my uncle-the genius had managed to persuade her to eat after checking her at the local hospital. Now how was I to know this?

It had frightened me to death. You know, all that insecure-ness perhaps of living far away and getting scrambled messages from home. Those at home thinking its best not to give all information, though (of course some) would add bits and pieces when you insist, just enough bits that make your mind go from one disease to another.
Yes, I know it’s because they care. Still you want to know every detail, not only to figure out whether you should get the fastest flight home or not, but to at least make sure there’s someone’s there by her side to rub some Vicks on her, make her some tea, and put a blanket over her and run her feet.
I know they’d do that, but I just wanted to be sure.

-moenlite-