Welcome to Madagascar — Jonathan Margolis and His Mother’s Death

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Welcome to Madagascar

It was raining the day that Elizabeth Margolis received the terrible news about her cancer. She had gone to her doctor because of an incessant cough, and she had thought that it was only a lung infection. She was in shock when they told her she had stage three lung cancer. She had never smoked. Her husband Peter had never smoked. There was no history of lung cancer in her family.

Their son Jonathan was four years old and had been diagnosed with Autism after his second birthday. He had never spoken. She didn’t know how to communicate with him, to tell him how sick she was, when he didn’t seem to acknowledge anything she said or did for him. She so wanted him to understand how much she loved him and how she wished that she would be around for the day that he finally spoke, but she knew in her heart of hearts that she would not be alive, and she would never get to hear her son’s voice.

It’s a hard question to understand why things happen the way they do, why, for some people, everything seems to go the way they want, and their lives are pleasant. For others, nothing seems to go right, and every possible tragedy befalls them, no matter how improbable. One hears stories about such tragedies almost every day. When they are published in the newspapers or broadcast on television, people gasp when they hear about them, when they are reminded about what a precarious and fickle world we all live in, where life is fragile and often unpredictable, where one day everything can be going for you and the next unimaginable tragedy strikes you without warning, like a plane flying into a building, while someone is sitting at work. For Elizabeth Margolis, her news was devastating. She knew whatever time she had left with Jonathan, she had to make it memorable for him, and she wanted to push the hard reality of her situation as far away as she could for as long as she had time.

What she didn’t know, nor could have any way of knowing, was that I, Jonathan, was aware of everything that was happening, and though I couldn’t speak, I could see things well beyond my years. I would find a way, even with my mother, in what little time she had left, to tell her I loved her and to make these days meaningful for her. I could see many things and would find a way to bring joy into her life, even under these terrible circumstances!