CHAPTER 3
The sun had only just begun to send its golden rays through the ventilation slats, but the quiet in Ayusari's house had already been torn apart by a soft thud from the master bedroom. Ayusari, who had been pouring hot water in the kitchen, stopped at once. Drying her hands on a towel, she hurried toward her mother's room.
Inside, Mom Tita stood before the wide-open wardrobe. Her trembling hands busily piled several batik cloths and house dresses into an old cloth bag. The worry etched across her aging face was unmistakable, and her eyes darted from side to side as if something were chasing her.
"Mom? Where are you going this early?" Ayusari asked gently as she approached. She kept her voice calm so she wouldn't startle her mother.
Mom Tita turned abruptly. Her gaze was unfamiliar, as though she didn't recognize the room where she had awakened. "Ayu... we have to go home now. I'm afraid Dad will be angry if we're late getting to the village. Your younger siblings are still little. No one's fed them yet."
Ayusari clenched her own fingers behind the folds of clothing. The damage to her mother's blood vessels caused by vascular dementia had pulled her back into a corridor of time from decades ago. In her mother's eyes, Ayusari was no longer a grown woman with two children, but a little girl who needed to be guided home to a village whose house had already been sold more than a decade ago.
"Mom... this is our home," Ayusari whispered, taking both of her mother's cold, trembling hands. She gently stroked their backs. "Dad won't be angry. The village is still far away, and it's still dark outside. Let's have some sweet hot tea at the dining table first, okay?"
Mom Tita tilted her head, staring at Ayusari's face with deeply furrowed brows. "Our home? But... my house didn't have a door this color. Where's Dad, Ayu?"
"Dad's at peace, Mom. He isn't tired anymore," Ayusari replied, choosing soothingly ambiguous words without provoking depression or fierce resistance from her mother. "Come on, I'll help carry your bag out front."
Little by little, Ayusari managed to take the cloth bag from her and guide her mother's slow steps toward the living room. Putri had just come out of the bathroom, but she immediately understood the situation when she saw the confusion on her grandma's face. Without being asked, Putri pulled out a chair at the dining table and placed a soft cushion on it.
"Grandma, sit here. I'll get your favorite biscuits," Putri called warmly, trying to distract her grandmother from the bag of clothes.
Mom Tita obeyed and slowly sat down. But when Ayusari placed a cup of hot tea in front of her, her body suddenly stiffened. The fingers that had been reaching for the handle froze in midair. Her gaze locked onto a single point on the blank wall, without even a blink.
"Mom? Mom Tita?" Ayusari called quickly.
There was no answer. Mom Tita didn't respond. Her breathing seemed slow, and her gaze was utterly empty, as though her soul had suddenly been torn from her body. This was a complex partial seizure—an absence episode in which abnormal electrical activity disrupted her brain without the intense physical convulsions of a generalized seizure.
"Putri, hold Grandma's hand from the side," Ayusari instructed calmly, even as her heart pounded. She moved the cup of hot tea out of her mother's reach so it wouldn't be knocked over. Ayusari gently rubbed the back of her mother's neck, counting each passing second in her mind while making sure her mother's airway remained clear.
One second... five seconds... fifteen seconds...
After nearly forty seconds that felt like an eternity, Mom Tita suddenly drew a deep breath. Her eyes blinked several times, and then her gaze refocused. She looked at Ayusari and Putri with a confused, exhausted expression, as though she had just awakened from a very long dream.
"Ayu... why am I here? I was... where was I going again?" Mom Tita murmured in an extremely hoarse voice.
Ayusari let out a long breath of relief, allowing oxygen to fill her lungs again. She smiled sweetly, hiding the tremor of fear that had just swept through her chest. "You wanted to have tea with me and Putri. Here's your tea. Take small sips, okay, Mom?"
Putri gently stroked her grandmother's hand. "Yes, Grandma. Have some tea first."
After making sure her mother drank her tea and that her physical condition was stable, Ayusari helped her back to bed to rest. The postictal effects of a partial seizure usually left Mom Tita's body extremely weak and in need of several hours of deep sleep.
At eight in the morning, the house fell quiet again after Putri and Yasa left for their respective routines. Ayusari sat alone at the empty dining table. Spread out before her was a compartmentalized medication box and her mother's medical records from the hospital.
She leaned back against the chair, closing her eyes for a moment. The exhaustion she had held back since before dawn seeped out through a single tear sliding down her cheek. Caring for a mother with dementia and epilepsy while raising two teenage daughters without a life partner was a long marathon with no finish line in sight. But when Ayusari opened her eyes and saw a neatly framed photo of her two daughters on the table, she wiped her cheeks firmly. Her hope was not over yet, and she refused to give up.