It has been 28 years and I finally managed to write about one of the darkest episodes of my life which had a permanent effect on our family.
It was the summer of 1997. I had just completed one year of marriage, six months since earning my doctorate, and was deep into postdoctoral work—writing, publishing, dreaming. I had nine papers published at a single conference. In many ways, it felt like the best phase of my life. I was living in Atlanta then.
But beneath that sunshine, a small cloud loomed—an unexpected rift between my wife and my parents. What should’ve been a minor misunderstanding turned into a full-blown conflict, inflated by ego on all sides. Hoping to ease the tension, I hurriedly arranged for my wife to move to the U.S. My mother, usually forgiving and wise, decided this time to make an exception—she stopped speaking to or asking about my wife. That silence cut deep. My own calls home became polite but cold, stripped of their usual warmth.
By July, my mother began complaining of abdominal pain. Doctors attributed it to stress—she had just lost her father in May and was still burdened by the tension at home. We thought it was all acidity, something that would settle with rest and care. After all, both my father and brother had long histories of acidity. None of us saw the storm coming.
In August, when I called my grandmother’s number to wish my uncle on his birthday, I learned my mother was visiting a homeopathic doctor. The pain had worsened, but I still believed it would fade with medication.
On September 4th, my parents’ 28th wedding anniversary, I called home with greetings—only to learn from my brother that my father had admitted my mother to the hospital. I was startled that he chose that day of all days. A few days later came the news: it was cancer. My father told me to come home immediately.
September was always my busiest month—deadlines. I was also dealing with the move from student visa to work visa. I resisted traveling at first, hoping she could come to Atlanta for treatment. But my father’s insistence made it clear things were slipping out of control.
I reached India on September 20th—just eighteen days before she left us. Seeing my once-vibrant, indefatigable mother reduced to weakness was unbearable. My father had work, my brother was in medical school, and my paternal grandmother and her mother were either too frail or disabled to help. So it was mostly me and my paternal grandmother caring for her. My job was to watch the IV drip, call the nurses, and request more morphine when she cried out in pain. Most days, she was too weak to speak. I also had to face the steady flow of relatives and friends arriving with their grief and unsolicited advice.
The doctors themselves were split—some saw her as a patient, others as a data point for research. It’s astonishing how even now many in the medical world forget that empathy and counseling are as vital as medication—especially when treating cancer.
A few days after I arrived, we were given two options:
1. Let her spend her remaining days with pain relief.
2. Attempt chemotherapy, which had little chance of success but came with severe side effects.
Normally, my mother would’ve made such decisions. This time, we had to choose without her. My father was overwhelmed. The burden fell on me—an impossible task for any child, let alone one still too young to process mortality.
With my uncles and brother, I decided against chemotherapy. We checked with other doctors in India and in Atlanta, but the verdict was the same—she was nearing the end.
The morphine gave her brief relief but brought vivid hallucinations. She’d imagine herself as a child at a grocery store, or believe that my wife had given birth to a son in the U.S., urging me to return immediately. She even asked for tea that morning—a drink she never touched—to celebrate her “grandson’s” birth. Strangely enough, less than three years later, we did have a son.
Watching her fade through pain and illusion broke us. Out of desperation, my father and I finally agreed to try chemotherapy. Within days, her weakened immunity due to the therapy led to a severe infection. Morphine’s side effects compounded the suffering, and she was shifted to the ICU. Even there, curiosity flickered in her eyes. She wanted to understand every machine, every wire. When I told her one of them measured oxygen, she tried to prove me wrong by unplugging it—not from defiance, but from that boundless curiosity that defined her. That was my mother.
In her final hours, on a ventilator, she tried to write something on my shirt—words that never formed, meanings forever lost. I still wonder what she was trying to tell me. We’ll never know.
She passed away on October 8, 1997, leaving all of us orphaned in spirit. To say she was the heart of our family is no exaggeration. She was endlessly resourceful—solving problems for friends, relatives, and strangers alike. Even from across the world, she kept me connected to everyone back home. She was the glue. Without her, we all drifted, polite but distant.
My children never really knew what a grandmother’s love feels like. My father lost his anchor. My uncles lost their advisor. The world lost one of those rare people who could combine kindness with strength, confidence with humility, intellect with heart.
It’s been twenty-eight years, and I still catch myself wondering, what would she have done? Saying our lives would have been different feels like an understatement. I often imagine her thriving in today’s world of technology—sharing her stories, wisdom, and recipes, probably with a devoted online following.
Over the years, I’ve known many remarkable women—each strong in her own way. Like the many forms of the mother goddess, strength too has many faces. Some quietly work within the boundaries society sets, rebelling only when they must. Others have the freedom to fight openly. And some, with no option but endurance, meet life’s blows with silent resilience.
My mother was something else altogether—a rare equilibrium of opposites: gentle yet unyielding, confident but never arrogant, proud without vanity, restless yet composed. To find another like her would be almost impossible.