On Life

All We Need Is One — One Reason To Live

To keep going, to keep walking on this path we have been put on.

They say a mother shouldn’t bury her child. My grandmother had buried two. She arrived in the hospital 10 minutes after my mother drew her last breath. I watched her being led to my mother’s room where she was sat on a plastic chair. She started crying, beating her chest while asking my deceased mother repeatedly why she didn’t wait for her. She told my mother’s lifeless body she was doing everything in her power, praying to God, going to temples, to make her better, why didn’t she hold on a little longer?

Heartbreaking doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt.

Worried would be an understatement. I was scared for her. My mother used to tell me how bad it was when my uncle died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 17. My grandma fell into depression. She refused to eat and talk for a while and lost a lot of weight.

And now another child departed. How is she going to pull through?

I remember walking over to her in a daze, hugged her fiercely and said to her, “You’ve got us. You’ve got your grandchildren, your son-in-law, your other children and grandchildren and a lot more people who are here for you and who still need you. You need to be strong for us. You have to hold on. She’s still here, in all of us. My brothers and I, we are half of her. She had left parts of her in this world.”

I was terrified of losing her. This is the grandmother who had raised my brothers and I since we were babies, when both my parents had to work full-time to make a living. I love her to bits and I can’t bear the thought of losing her. I could barely hold myself together when the doctor declared my mother deceased.

I don’t, to this day, know which one was greater — my fear of facing the world without my mother or my fear of losing my grandma.

All I knew was I had to get on my feet, walk to my grandma and told her she has a lot of reasons to live for.