A lesson learnt on Mother’s Day( 654 words)

 

I was a young doctor then, fresh out of internship and full of uncertain dreams. I had just set up a modest private practice in a small, sleepy town, where life moved slowly and people lived a simple life with silent grace. My practice had barely begun to find its footing. Most days, I saw a trickle of patients—just a handful in the mornings and fewer still by evening. I had turned the front hall of my rented home into a consulting room, with a narrow space in between serving as my examination area. There were no other private practitioners nearby, just a government hospital—overburdened, under-equipped, and struggling to care for the town’s poorest

One night, as the clock struck 2 a.m., I woke up to a soft knock at my door. A young boy stood there, his face pale in the moonlight, his voice barely a whisper.

“Doctor, an old lady in the apartment next to ours… she’s very sick. My mom says it’s serious.”

I put on a coat and followed him, asking questions as we drove in my rattling jalopy. He didn’t know much—only that the old woman lived alone and his mother was with her now.

I found her inside a dimly lit room, curled up on a thin mattress, barely a shadow of a person. Her body trembled with fever, and her breathing was shallow. The neighbour, the boy’s mother, explained that she had heard groaning and found the old woman alone, vomiting, feverish, and weak.

“I have been to your clinic a few times,” she said. “Your medicines helped me get well. That’s why I thought of you.”

I examined the patient. She was dangerously dehydrated, her pulse racing. She needed immediate fluids and care. I gently told her neighbour the old woman needed to be admitted.

The sick woman’s frail voice broke the silence. “Please… let me go in peace. I have no one. There’s no one left to care if I live or die.”

The neighbour looked at me with sad eyes. “She has a son abroad. But he hasn’t visited in over a decade. She won’t take his money. She survives on a small pension. No visitors, no family. Just us, the neighbours.”

I knelt beside her. “You remind me of my mother,” I told her quietly. “I can’t let you suffer like this. Please, let me help you. This is not just duty—it’s something deeper. Let me be your son tonight.”

Her lips trembled; her eyes were glassy. She slowly nodded, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

“You are a kind boy,” she whispered. “Just like my son should have been. Tell me, how much do I owe you for coming here… for taking me to the hospital?”

I held her hand. “You owe me nothing. Let’s talk about payment after you’re well and back home.”

I got her admitted and stayed until emergency treatment began. Then, exhausted, I returned home at dawn.

When I woke up again around 8 a.m., I rushed to the hospital with a strange tightness in my chest. The duty doctor looked at me and lowered his head.

“We did our best. She was too weak. She passed peacefully just after sunrise.”

He added, “She kept trying to tell us something… about money, maybe… something she owed you. Her voice was too faint.”

I stood silently, throat thick, heart aching.

“She was like a mother to me,” I finally said, my voice shaking. “She owed me nothing. I’ll take care of her last rites. She deserves that much. No one should leave this world alone.”

It was Mother’s Day; I didn’t have flowers readily to place by her side. But I thought of the old woman who, in her final hours, found in me the son she longed for—and gave me, without knowing, the deepest lesson in compassion, love, and quiet motherhood.