I fought back tears when I read this morning’s report. It is entitled “Police officer in accident taken off life support.”
Mdm Salinah Mohamed was taken off life support on Valentine’s day, four days after she suffered extensive head injuries in a car accident on Sunday.
The 51-yr-old driver was arrested for dangerous driving.
Mdm Salinah’s husband, Indra Shaiful (41), had to make the painful decision to pull the plug when the “head injuries were so severe that the doctors initially were afraid to move her for tests.”
Shaiful said that he “had been with her since Sunday, when she was fighting for her life, but I didn’t get to talk to her at all.”
He described his wife as “easygoing, well-liked by everyone and loved to plan surprises and present gifts to her friends.”
“They met in 1994, when they were students at First Toa Payoh Secondary School.”
They had intended to celebrate their wedding anniversary on 28 February with a “romantic overseas trip”.
Shaiful said that “she had been my soulmate, and she had always been there for me. I feel like I have lost a part of me.”
Alas, the most poignant part of the report was the reaction of their three children.
“Their two daughters, aged nine and 12, and 11-year-old son miss their mother most just before they go to sleep.”
Shaiful said: “My son is also close to my wife. When he is alone and doing nothing now, he cries secretly.”
“They will be missing the motherly love that every child should have.”
Lesson?....
I always wonder, how powerful is motherly love to a child or her children.
From the time you are conceived in her womb to the time you are born, and the priceless bonding thereafter, from being nurtured by her to the memory of playing with her, from the privilege of listening to her soft whispers in your tiny ears, feeling her touching your little fingers and toes, and her hugging you tightly to the utterance of your first words and taking your first step before her as she tears in joy, truly, what is motherly love to a child?
From the time you go to her to share your greatest anxiety about the first day of school, which is nothing more than the fear of being separated from her even for only a few hours, and knowing that it breaks her heart too because she also cannot bear to be apart from you, truly, what is motherly love to a child?
And from the time of your first argument with her and when you eventually come to her with these words, “mommy, I’m so sorry. I love you” to the time you tell a little white lie and she sits you down to tell you how she feels about it, and the time you excitedly share with her that you have fallen in love and how she responds with mixed feelings knowing full well this time she will have to really let you go to start your own family, seriously, what is motherly love to a child?
I always imagine that when I married my wife, I am also marrying the future mother of our children.
Well, I can list many qualities of a wife that are irreplaceable, but one such quality that takes all precedence is that she will one day be our children’s mother. That is both irreplaceable and indispensable.
Motherhood is not only a privilege and responsibility, it is also a source of life for both mother and child. It gives both of them meaning and hope. They grow together, in parallel, and the bond they develop over time is for life.
The relationship is like a safe harbour, and a child never forgets to return home to his or her mother when the storm of life overwhelms.
In turn, the mother never fails to be waiting by the edge of the harbour as the clouds gather to watch for her beloved returning to her loving arms.
That, in essence, is what motherly love is to a child, and that is what motherhood is to a mother.
And to lose that bond, to not be able to touch and hold her in the nights that you cry for her with all your heart, is a pain that I can’t imagine for a child.
That is why Shaiful said, “They will be missing the motherly love that every child should have.”
In the light of what I’ve written, we husbands too cannot live without that bond between our wife and our child because we know it is truly irreplaceable.
And to lose it is like what Shaiful said, “I feel like I have lost a part of me.”
Alas, words cannot express the loss Shaiful feels and even more so, the loss Mdm Salinah’s three children feel. As Shaiful said, “My son is also close to my wife. When he is alone and doing nothing now, he cries secretly.”
I pray for Shaiful and his three children. I wish them well and hope that while time will not heal completely, at least it will give them reason to go on living knowing full well that the one who loved them unconditionally would want nothing less for them but to live on, to live on with courage, to live on for her. For she is more than a hero to them, she is their mother.
And because a bond this strong is for life, and it never leaves you - never. RIP.
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