"The call came around 3 a.m. "Your mum had a stroke," I heard my cousin in India say. I crumpled to the floor. As I sat sobbing, he explained that she was in surgery and still critical. My mind swam with disbelief. Less than 24 hours ago, I had spoken to her over video chat. She'd been in high spirits singing Old MacDonald to her new grandson our daily morning ritual since his birth that April."
"A week later I flew to Mumbai alone. It was too short a timeline to organize an emergency passport and visa for our little one. During the 17-hour flight, I repeatedly pumped and dumped breast milk in the airplane restroom, wracked with guilt over abandoning my infant son for three weeks. But my mother might die. I needed to be there for her, as she had always been for me."
A 3 a.m. call informed her that her mother had a stroke and was in surgery and critical. She had spoken to her mother less than 24 hours earlier, when the mother was singing to the newborn grandson. She flew alone to Mumbai because it was too late to arrange emergency travel documents for her infant, and she pumped and discarded breast milk during the 17-hour flight while feeling guilty. She arrived to find her mother in intensive care and learned her father had stage four lung cancer, facing the possibility of losing both parents and feeling compounded grief, frustration and fear about distance and missed goodbyes. The plan had been to move the parents to Canada that December.
Read at www.cbc.ca
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