When Your Mother is Sick – A hermit-crab fiction

Keep relatives at a distance, they will never visit but will always give untimely advice or spill half-true family secrets. 

Keep friends close by, they will visit sometimes and cheer your mother up, even though they will never take responsibility.

Put the house-help in the middle; keep an eye on them.

Bring out the old photographs and letters; the pictures will bring old memories back. Letters will make you either sad or happy; read them but don't analyze them.

Drizzle the lie that you are fine; your mother is fine, and everything is fine. You should never let people to peek inside your closets.

Don't bury hope and don't lose patience.

Keep expectations in a low flame and stir wishes as long as you can.

Shower your mother with extra love and care; you never know how much time is left and you don't want to know how regret tastes like.

Sprinkle sanity even if you are losing it.

Serve with a pinch of good vibes and a smile as broad as sunshine.

Marzia Rahman is a fiction writer and translator. Her translations have appeared in Six Seasons Review, Writing Places Anthology (UK), The Book of Dhaka, The Demoness, and When the Mango Tree Blossomed. In 2017, she participated in the International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School at University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK.