Waheeda

Just the other day I received an email, about how every person we interact with or who come into our lives have a purpose, that they touch our lives, change them in some way… of course, we may not fathom the change immediately, but they do subtly or drastically change the way we look at things forever…

The above probably explains why God sent Waheeda in our lives, to begin — we met with Waheeda through a mutual friend last year, and she came home to look after our 2 year old Shauny, in a brief span of 2 months, Shauny and Waheeda developed a rapport without having anything in common.  Waheeda didn’t speak English and Shaun of course didn’t understand Arabic, despite the language barrier they were a great team, within a matter of days, Shaun was saying "Aiwa…Good Shaun !!" which was the encouraging line he got every time he listened to her or was good. On my holidays at home, I could see hordes of school children flocking near our ground floor window, which over looks the school, come to say hi to Shaun, simply because Waheeda used to feed him while letting him interact with them. 

Then came a time when she left, without explanations, just saying she wasn’t keen on coming back.  Since I was at that time expecting my second child, I was stranded and had to go back to my day care provider…needless to say, I didn’t have a very positive image of the brief encounter we had. Shaun of course kept asking for her, and looking at her pictures with him and questioning why she wouldn’t come anymore..

Four months later, I received a call from our friend saying, "Waheeda is diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, and is on her last stage"….words can not explain what I felt then.   I wanted to rewind, to go and look back, to rectify something, anything!  I rushed to the hospital, and saw her almost diminished to half of what she was when she left us, the only thing she said to me was, I am so glad you came…I am so sorry I had to leave so abruptly.  The one thing that I remember prominently about Waheeda is that for somebody being terminally ill and diagnosed to be on the last stage, she had an amazing radiance on her face, a glow which can only come from having a truly beautiful heart.  That is the one thing I remember the most about her, and she never said she was in pain, she always said she was fine.

Then began a new lease on our relationship, we renewed our acquaintance and she was no longer just our domestic help, she was a part of us…she left to go to India on the verge of her death, since the hospitals here, said they could no longer help her.  We waited a long time after that dreading the call from home, to tell us that she is no more.  Miraculously it never came…

Her mother who was here in Kuwait, gave us news sometimes hopeful sometimes in despair! but she was there all along in our thoughts, not a single day had passed when we didn’t wonder how she was doing.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we would see her again, meet her again…but we did, she traveled back to Kuwait in January 2006 and was her for a brief span of three months, she never knew the extent of her illness, neither did the mother fully comprehend what we were trying to tell her.  She insisted on coming and looking after my kids, but of course we had to refuse, I asked her to come and visit us, and we did the same.  But then the pains returned full fledged this time, and she traveled back…It was July 16, 2006 – after 4 months of terrible pains, sufferings, procedures and injections….she passed away…

Waheeda aged 39, when we met her had been briefly married for a period of just 8 months and did not have any children of her own, doctors later told us that Ovarian Cancer was predominant in women who had not conceived or delivered babies. A friend recently told me that her name translated in Arabic meant "The Lonely One"!

I am thankful to God for bringing her into our lives, for touching our hearts so intimately, for making us realize how precious people are, the only thought foremost in my mind right now, is to not delay living or postponing something because we are busy or thoughtless or otherwise pre-occupied with soccer, soaps or routines…life is too beautiful to be mundane. Live Life & Love IT !!

Author: Tina Miranda- Kuwait