Morgan’s Search for a Cure

 

Morgan worries about me more than she ever says out loud — I see it in the way her eyes flick to my face when I cough, in how she pauses before asking if I’m okay, and especially in how she’s taken it upon herself to become some kind of medical detective.

 

She’s a whiz on computers, honestly. Give her a keyboard and an internet connection and she’ll have ten tabs open, cross-referencing scientific studies with herbal remedies, reading medical journals like they’re gossip columns. She’s constantly searching the web for cancer cures, new treatments, old treatments, anything that might help me breathe easier — literally or emotionally.

 

 she came to me with soursop.

Soursop tea, soursop tablets, soursop juice — Mum, apparently soursop is everything.

 

And I love her. God, I love her for trying. She wants so desperately to fix something that isn’t hers to fix. But the worry is eating her alive in ways she doesn’t realise. She’s so focused on saving me that she’s forgetting to take care of herself. I can see it — the tiredness, the stress, the way she pushes herself until she’s close to breaking.

 

I worry that she’s going to make herself poorly doing all this.

And the cruel part is: I don’t know how to make her stop without breaking her heart.

 

So I just hold her hand, thank her, and tell her I love her.

 

Because that’s all I can do right now.

As i sit here now drinking Sousop tea

 

 

Because how do you tell your child — your clever, big-hearted child — that the world isn’t as simple as find the cure, fix Mum? How do you say, “I’m scared,” without breaking them? She’s trying so hard to save me that she’s forgetting to save herself.

 

And it’s starting to show.

 

The dark circles under her eyes. The way she skips meals. The stress that sits in her shoulders. She doesn’t even realise she’s wearing herself down, pouring every drop of energy into me when she should be living. Laughing. Being young. Not researching the survival rates of cancers or reading forums at two in the morning.

 

I worry she’s going to make herself poorly doing all this.

 

And that’s the part that hurts the most — watching your child exhaust themselves trying to keep you alive.

 

So I do what I can.

I hold her hand.

I thank her.

I tell her I love her.

And I let her hand me soursop tea like it’s magic, because to her, it is.

 

One day, I’ll sit her down properly.

One day, when my chest doesn’t feel like a cracked mess and the room isn’t spinning.

One day, I’ll tell her she doesn’t need to save me — she just needs to be my daughter.

 

But for now, I let her try.

Because that’s her way of saying she loves me.

And honestly… I couldn’t be prouder of her.