There is a choice that no parent would ever want to be forced to make. Yet a mother found herself before that decision, knowing that whatever choice she had made would break her heart.
When little Omar was only ten years old, he was seriously ill. For his mother, Gheuwan Arja, that news brought to mind a still alive pain: he had already experienced the loss of other children, including a dead child due to a brain tumor.
It was that memory that led his choice.
He was afraid that if Omar had known the truth, he would have thought he was destined to the same final as his brother. He chose not to reveal his diagnosis and continued to support him throughout the treatment process, even when doctors told her that there was no longer any therapies that could stop the disease.
For Omar, every visit to the hospital had only one purpose: to heal.
The day he played the bell that many patients resonate at the end of the treatment, he was convinced he had made it. He smiled, embraced his family and returned home with the hope of having a new life ahead.
She was actually living the last few months of hers.
He spent them surrounded by the affection of the people he loved, without the weight of the awareness that the time at his disposal was now little. In January 2022 he died in his house, next to his father.
Since then the story has made the world around, raising a question to which there is no simple answer. In front of a seriously ill child, is it always right to tell the whole truth? Or, in extreme situations, can protect his serenity represent an equally authentic gesture of love?
Everyone can have a different answer.
What this story tells with certainty is the immense weight a mother has brought on her shoulders. He couldn't change the diagnosis or stop the disease. He could only decide how to accompany his son in the time he had left.
And he chose to fill those days of hope, convinced that, at least until the last, no fear should steal his smile.