I’ve slept on a hard cold ground before. I had one blanket placed on top of me to keep me warm. My siblings who were all hugging tightly with one another were also keeping me warm. This was our new home in a new country and we felt unwelcomed. We had no furniture, food, or a functioning restroom. It was completely exhausting to just even think that I once had everything and had to give it all up. At the time I didn’t fully understand why it had to be done but as time went by I realized that my mom’s health was a huge spectrum on why we abandoned our old lives. She was diagnosed with cancer and nobody in our family understood how we could approach her. This was something so delicate and so rare to occur in our family so I didn’t choose to believe it was real. I watched my mother's big beautiful curly hair transition to a short ball of nothing in a matter of weeks. She began her treatment and she couldn’t be unhappier. She said that the machine made her feel weak, that it was killing her faster than cancer. I didn’t understand what she meant by that. I mean if this machine was created to heal why would it be killing her inside? As my mother got sicker she stopped doing the simple things that she enjoyed. At this point, I was aware that she wasn’t losing this battle to cancer but to herself. I confronted her on the matter and she agreed that she wasn’t mentally prepared for this journey. I wasn’t either.
