What I See When I Watch Her

I truly can’t imagine what it is like to be my mother.

I watch her move through the day, making sure her adult children are cared for. Sometimes I wonder how she does it. It feels as though she runs a one-woman, fully functioning hospital from her home.

One moment she’s a nurse, managing medication and checking vitals. The next, she becomes the doctor — offering her own small diagnoses, shaped by the cultural remedies she has learned to trust. Then she’s a physiotherapist, massaging aching limbs. At times she’s even an orderly, offering physical support. Soon after, she’s in the kitchen, preparing meals suited to our different dietary needs. Laundry gets done. Floors get swept. The yard gets tended, in her own way.

At first glance, this may seem like what parents simply do. But everything about my mother’s story says she shouldn’t be doing this. She stepped away from work earlier than expected because her body could no longer keep up. Illness became familiar. Hospital visits were frequent. After multiple strokes, she retired, but sickness did not retire with her.

There were times when she left for the hospital and I quietly prepared myself for the possibility that she might not return. And yet, she always did. God had other plans.

Now when I look at her — still not fully well, still living within limits — I feel something unexpected alongside concern. I feel comfort. Like me, she has been in and out of health facilities, learning her body again, and living with uncertainty.

Life doesn’t pause until the body feels better. Purpose doesn’t disappear when strength looks different. Being limited doesn’t mean being finished. Maybe that’s what she keeps showing me.

She has been where I am. Still not well. Still here. And somehow, that is enough to remind me that even within limits, life is still being lived.