I sent my husband to the airport last Saturday. The first time since January 2020 that we’ve both been to the airport. Also, the first time that he has flown to England minus me since we’ve been married.

It feels quite sad and disconcertingly quiet to be home on my own. My husband is not a noisy or loud person. That’s not it at all. It’s the absence of his presence.  It’s real and palpable. Yes, we spend a fair bit of time together, sans children. More so with the many, many phases of the Movement Control Order (MCO) or lockdowns due to the scourge of Covid-19. The only ‘outing’ we’ve had is the evening walks along the streets of KL just to get out of the condo, and to get some exercise.

That said, we don’t live out of each other’s pockets. We do our own things. We like our own space. We don’t need to spend every waking moment with each other. We don’t need to speak to one another all the time. Silence is not awkward. There’s a sense of comfort, support and reassurance in each other’s presence. I miss him. I knew I would. I told him so. But it had to be done. We both agreed that he must go for his mum while I must stay for mine.

I’ve written about my mum in my previous posts. In fact, I have a category called ‘My mum’s stories.’ It comprises her recipes – each and every one of them must be followed to a T to produce the best results – and narratives about her childhood as well as her adult life before me and with me now.

88 this September. Older, weaker and frailer. It didn’t happen suddenly. So gradual was the ageing and ailing process that it was and wasn’t noticeable. I knew she had to stop to catch her breath every few steps when we used to go for our weekly lunch and shopping. I knew she was losing weight and almost shrinking in size. I knew she has angina, asthma and arthritis – health problems with her heart, lung and bones. Yet, I was stunned when her echocardiogram measured her Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) at 35% in June, 2021 down from 54 % in 2019. In just two years. EF is the percentage of blood the heart can push forward with each pump. Her heart is failing.

If that wasn’t enough, she fell off her double bed onto her tatami mat in August. I’ve been placing the tatami mat every night as a just-in-case as my mum has a habit of doing 180% movements in bed. It did buffer her fall. A CT- brain revealed no injuries, no bleeding inside the skull, which was a relieve. But another echocardiogram, ordered by her cardiologist, showed her EF had plummeted further to 28% from 35% in less than two months. The scarily low EF, which translates to reduced blood and oxygen pumped to all her vital organs – heart, lungs, brain, kidney – has taken a major toll on my old girl.

She now needs 24×7 care. My two older brothers have been enlisted as carers. We do night/day shifts on a rota basis. She is confused about time, people, and places. Her night is day and her day is night – unfortunate for her children/carers – as she keeps us awake all night. She cannot remember the condo she has been living in for the past 8 years. And yet, she can have perfectly normal conversations about everyday stuff when she is lucid. They are the moments that I treasure. That is the mum I remember. She has also lost her appetite for food. There is no interest in her TV dramas. She is breathless without her oxygenator. Her weak heart makes her tired and sleepy all the time. The prognosis is poor.

Amidst managing and living with my mum’s illness, it came as a shock when my husband’s dad, who’s also in his eighties and with a heart problem, passed away in late August. It was very sudden and very sad. It was and still is unreal. He was admitted to the hospital with a breathing problem. Recovered enough to inform his daughter, my sis-in-law, who managed to visit him despite the Covid restrictions, that he will be home soon to plant some bulbs that he had bought for the garden. Yes, my dad-in-law had ailments but nothing so serious or so I thought that would take him from us. He was fine one day, and gone the next.

My husband is with his mum, my mum-in-law, to spend time with her, be with family and attend the funeral. I am with my mum. Sad and difficult …