3 minute read
HER mOTHER’S DAUgHTER
from khuluma May 2021
In this intimate extract from her book, The Truths We Hold, US Vice President Kamala Harris highlights the part her mother played in making her who she is today. It’s dedicated to all the moms who are with us, and those who are no more
My mother’s condition worsened, she needed more care than we could provide. We wanted to hire a home healthcare aide to help her – and me. But she didn’t want help.
‘I’m fine. I don’t need anybody,’ she’d say, though she could barely get out of bed. There was a fight to be had about it, but I didn’t want to have it. Cancer – the disease she’d devoted her life to defeating – was now wreaking havoc on her. Her body was giving out. The medication was making it difficult for her to function – to be herself. I didn’t want to be the one who took her dignity away.
So we muddled through. I cooked elaborate meals for her, filling the house with the smells of childhood, reminding us both of happier times. When I wasn’t at the office, I was usually with her, telling stories, holding hands, helping her through the chemotherapy misery.
I bought her hats after she lost her hair, and soft clothes to improve her comfort. were all in a great state of delusion – especially me. I couldn’t bear to tell my mother no – not because she couldn’t take it, but because I couldn’t. Whether it was a question of bringing a nurse home or staying in the nursing home or going to India, I didn’t want to accept what saying no to her meant. I didn’t want to accept that she was running out of time.
One night, Maya, Tony, Meena, and I were all at my mother’s house when Aunt Mary and Aunt Lenore came for a visit. I cooked. I’ll never forget that night – I was making beef stew. While the meat was cooking down in red wine, all of a sudden my brain figured out what was happening around me. I began hyperventilating – short breaths in and out. I felt I might faint. Suddenly, the delusion was gone. I had to face reality. I was going to lose my mother; there was nothing I could do.
We had called our uncle in India to let him know she was too sick to travel. He flew from Delhi to see her. She waited for him to say goodbye. She passed away the next morning.
One of the last questions she asked the hospice nurse, the last concern on her mind, was ‘Are my daughters going to be okay?’ She focused on being our mother until the very end.
I miss her every day, carry her with me wherever I go. I think of her all the time. Sometimes I look up and talk to her. I love her so much. And there is no title or honour on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter. That is the truth I hold dearest of all.
At one point, I had just gotten into the attorney general’s race and she asked me how it was going.
‘Mommy, these guys are saying they’re gonna kick my ass.’
She’d been lying on her side. She rolled over, looked at me, and unveiled the biggest smile. She knew who she had raised. She knew her fighting spirit was alive and well inside me.
When it was time for hospice care, we took her home and, finally, she let a hospice nurse come with us. Maya and I still didn’t believe that she could die, to the point that when she said she wanted to go to India, we booked plane tickets and started planning her trip. We worked out how to get her on a plane, arranged for a nurse to accompany us. We * From Penguin Random House, Kamala Harris’s autobiographical The Truths We Hold: An American Journey has recently been republished in a new soft-cover edition.