Dear Diary, Itni bhi kya jaldi thi jaane ki, Abhi toh badha hona seekhna tha. Here’s a story that I still haven’t recovered from. June 2017. Mummy was not doing well. One random day she was feeling very ill, my dad took her to the doctors for a regular checkup. I, in the second year of college, thought it was nothing serious. The next thing I remember mummy came to my room and said her cancer tests came back and the results were normal. Papa being papa didn’t mention that things were serious. A few months later, mummy’s health was worse. She had to go through surgery to remove the big lump on her left thigh (which we kids thought was cancerless). My dad took her to every doctor possible, all over India. Things were getting serious, and her health was deteriorating. 20th September 2017. Mom underwent another surgery and came back home. She was doing better than before. Looking at her smile meant the world to me. Papa never used to show us the reports and always said there was nothing to worry about. I, however, got hold of the reports and started reading them. Her condition stated something that I did not know the meaning of. I googled what it meant and to my horror, the results showed: Lung cancer stage IV. To this day, whenever I think about this moment, my hands start shaking. Even now while typing this, my heart’s racing. I did not know what to do. My sisters and I called papa to another room. We were shaken. Did not know what to say. Di was angry at papa for not telling her what was going on. I, like always, was defending papa. Papa started crying and said, “beta main kya bolta tumhe?”. I tried to control the situation, and we decided to go back to mummy’s room and act normal. I did not realise back then how bad things really were, or maybe I was just putting on a strong face to make sure my sisters were okay, I am my papa’s son after all. The next month was my life’s worst. We had to take mummy to the hospital every other day because she had problems breathing. Things were getting worse by the day. Papa had lost so much weight, I could see from his eyes that he barely slept. Mummy was hospitalised again. The cancer had taken over one of her lungs. She had to put on an oxygen machine to survive. That same night, I was feeling ill and had a really high temperature. The next day, my elder sister took me to a doctor, and it turned out I had dengue. He asked me to be hospitalised immediately. The worst part of getting dengue was not that I had terrible body ache, it was that I was not allowed to see and visit Mumma in the ICU. A couple of days later I was sent home as I was doing much better and my reports were normal. I finally had a chance to meet Mumma, I was eagerly waiting for that moment. That night papa’s phone rang at 4 am, a call from the hospital and they asked him to come right away. The moment his phone rang, I knew what had happened. He left for the hospital with my mama. We kids were really worried and wanted to know if Mumma was alright. My eldest sister called dad and said “Papa kya hua?”, after a few seconds he replied “no more”. We all saw what Mumma was going through, we could see the pain and the struggle to even take a single breath. She indeed went to a better place. The thing that still haunts me is I never got to see you and say goodbye to you, mummy. Maybe it is a good thing I didn't see you at your weakest. Maybe it is not. I don’t know. Text prompts: An angel flying away from a child. Check out the code for this NFT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bFgmDRv3X8v4gpQFmh_519Giw12EfFXT/view?usp=sharing