We moved her from the seat to the ground and started to perform CPR. Now I know how common a pulmonary embolism can be after long haul travel so I should have known the risks. Then as she decompensated further, I demanded the flight staff to get me supplemental oxygen, and my mind raced further-was she having a myocardial infarction, an arrhythmia, a PE, oh my, not a pulmonary embolus. She did not have any significant medical history, so it must be anxiety, a panic attack I thought. Now, I am an MD, a medical doctor, so the differential for shortness of breath quickly raced through my worried mind. As we were preparing to disembark the plane and as my mom attempted to put on her shoes, she became acutely short of breath. However, this would prove to be furthest from the truth, much to my dismay and years of subsequent grief. Everything is fine,” were the last words I texted my worried younger sister who was at her home in College Park, Maryland. But nothing would prepare me for what would happen upon landing, and it would change my life forever. We discussed some of the important moments in the movies we watched, and we together counted down the hours in anticipation of landing in Hong Kong.
#In remembrance of movie#
We enjoyed chicken and rice, ice cream, and wine, all while watching movie after movie, The Martian & Black Mass to name a few. We slept, my head on my mom’s shoulder at times. How bad could the lengthy flight be? We would sleep a few hours, watch a few movies, enjoy the food and snacks on the plane, and most of all cherish each other’s company. We were feeling all sorts of emotions, but nervousness was not one of them. It was by far the longest flight either of us have taken. The only thing that separated us from our delightful destiny was a fifteen hour or so flight from San Francisco, California to Hong Kong. She invited us to experience the thrill of Chinese New Year! And we were on our way. You see, my sister was residing in China, teaching English at one of the private schools just outside of Guangzhou.
And the cherry on top-we would be visiting my older sister who we hadn’t seen for more than a few years. What a celebration it would be! The lights, the fireworks, the festivities! We couldn’t wait. If that were not exciting enough, we were going on February 4th, 2016, which meant we would be there for Chinese New Year, the Year of the Monkey. We were going to Guangzhou, China, by way of Hong Kong.
“Yes,” my mother replied with the same eagerness to match my enthusiasm. “Did you get your typhoid vaccine yet?” I asked with exhilaration, always showing preparedness instilled in me from my time as a Boy Scout. We had planned this for years, both of us excited for what the adventure would bring. The name of the room is Remember-the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.It was supposed to be fun. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need-not all the time, surely, but from time to time-to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. “The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming.
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