My mother loves my son

My mother loves Daniel. I could not have managed without all the support from my mother and my siblings. They were my pillar of strength, always there for me.

When it became difficult for me to visit them with my son as he got bigger, I asked my sister if she would consider selling their Tampines flat to move nearer to where I was so that I could walk over with my son.

My sister sold the flat she jointly owned with my mother and they moved to Pasir Ris.

Such was the love and support I got from my family.

Due to the COVID-19 situation, my mother and siblings could not visit my son in hospital though they wanted to.

When my son got worse, my mother wanted to see him. It was early in the morning of 19 June 2020. So my sister asked for a video call. At that time my son was so sick, he had no energy to response to anything. But when we held the phone before him and my mother called him by name, I saw the immediate response in his eyes and he moved his lower jaw.

I was really heartbroken, really heartbroken. He was not able to express himself. He had been shut in a world not by his own choice. From the time he was born, he had been shut in his world not by his own choice. And forever, carried with him all the things that he would have wanted to say but could not.

I was full of faith in the beginning and always hopeful for miracles. We worked so hard, exercised so much but as the years went by, our lot was one of giving up, of yielding bit by bit.

Discouragement replaced faith and hope. It was difficult to bear. The suffering of my son never left me. It was a torment to think of how he had suffered.

His greatest strength became the source of his greatest suffering. This strength of enduring without complaint meant that many times he suffered alone.

Half an hour after my mother spoke to him on video call, suddenly the nurse fussed around him changing the nasal tube to oxygen masks. I look at the monitor and saw his oxygen level falling from 100% to 80+. I checked the clip on his finger. I thought perhaps the clip was not properly in place and not measuring the oxygen level correctly. But his blood pressure fell. Everything happened so quickly. In a matter of seconds, the oxygen level dropped to zero. And the colour left my son. He was completely pale, colourless, and his eyes remained open.

I cried. It was cruel.