Member-only story
When Words Became Shelter
May Prompt: The Hope Jar
It was November 2020, the latter half of COVID. The time when people started to realize that the lockdown and work from home didn’t mean party time, something serious was going on. My parents and I lived in different cities, about 400 km away.
My mother had fallen ill, but no one was aware. A phone call that I had made left me suspicious. It was not safe to use public transport. My husband wasn’t comfortable with the idea of my traveling alone by bus, so he took me by car.
On reaching, we came to know she had suffered a heart attack. We took her to the hospital immediately. The doctor said she needed a stent insertion. She had to be hospitalized for two days. We couldn’t return home after discharge as she was advised against traveling.
We could neither take her back home, which was more than 70 km from the hospital, nor stay. While I sat in the hotel room feeling dejected, I got a phone call. It was my cousin. She said, “Don’t worry. You can stay in our house.”
Her words energized me. That’s when I realized how a few words could make a difference.
An invitation to write for Wild Draft!
