June 16, 2018
I am sitting on a plane ready to takeoff for China. I am supposed to be feeling excited. But I am just sad. I remember flying with Zubin by my side. He was such a pro-traveler. Even at 3 he had the routine down. Within minutes of the plane taking off, he would be reaching for his headphones and cranking up the kids’ entertainment channel. He loved watching movies on flights. And he was a fan of animated movies – you know the kind they show on kids’ channels – Incredibles, Moana, Coraline , Kubo and the Two Strings and such. I loved watching these movies with him. They were my guilty excursions into a child’s world of fantasy and magic. The last time I watched one of these movies was with Zubin. I haven’t been able to bring myself to reenter his world without him. On this flight though, I thought I would try to watch a kids’ animated movie. I scrolled through the titles, many of which I had already watched with Zubin. I could not pick any of the familiar ones. So I selected Tad the Lost Explorer And the Secret of King Midas, a Spanish animated film translated to English. I watched it with a constant ache in my heart thinking of the numerous times when I had watched similar movies in the hospital room with Zubin. I remembered when colorful animated graphics and bright music of these movies had blended with fluorescent lights in sterile rooms of our pediatrics cancer hospital, and my kid’s innocence and fate had danced a complicated macabre tango of life and death.
On the rest of the flight I decided to read a book that was recommended by my friend. It is called Fast Draft your Memoir: Write your Life Story in 45 hours by Rachael Herron. I am going to follow her approach and see if I can complete the first draft of my Zubin’s story during this trip. It will be excruciatingly hard, but I am determined to do it.
Thinking of Zubin 