I’m almost there with a first draft of The Gift: a memoir of love, loss, and of learning to live. The final chapter has been drafted. There’s still a few transitional chapters remaining, but getting this final chapter down and in reasonable shape was a big step in the process for me. Beginnings and endings can be challenging, so I’m bursting with joy that I’m almost there with mine. At least the first draft.
I started working on this memoir at the beginning of COVID, in 2020. I’ve meandered along the path, distracted myself with some poetry and art among other things. But keep coming back to it, and now the focus is there.
Here’s the first page of the final chapter:
Part 5
Ch 26
July 2019
Koh Samui
The doctor had done a full blood count, but I wish she’d checked my iron levels. She hadn’t even done an ultrasound to make sure the baby was ok. I really should have insisted, but I was fighting too many things to be my own advocate too.
If I couldn’t rest out of my own will, this baby growing inside of me was making me. The same way Rahul and Leila had been my biggest teachers, this baby was of the same mastery.
After three nights in the hospital on IV and anti-nausea meds, the kids and Maher came to pick me up, to finally drive me home. They came in with their takeaway pad kaprow gai chicken, sweet basil and chilli stir fry with steamed rice dinner and gobbled it up while I waited for my paperwork to come through. My nausea was still on edge, so I kept myself busy and at some distance from their food. I packed my new charger and phone that Maher had just brought as a gift for me. I got out of my hospital uniform and into one of my two sets of clothes. I double checked the bag of anti nausea pills and minerals that the doctor prescribed for me.
On our way home, I sat in the passenger seat of the Pajero, holding on to my bag of meds, as Maher drove. I leaned into the window dreading the 30 minute drive. As soon as we were on our way the nausea kicked in again.
“I feel really bad again,” I said with my eyes half shut, leaning my head back. “Charlotte Bronte died in her fourth month of pregnancy, from hyperemesis gravida… something, this intense morning sickness,” I told Maher on the drive home, when the kids weren’t listening. “That’s what I have you know?”
I was hoping for both some sympathy and a laugh.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’re not Charlotte Bronte. Not yet,” he winked.
We laughed for the first time in weeks.
Natasha Devalia 