THE APARTMENT MY SON, Hugo, and I moved into after my divorce was nice, but the feeling we had was of holding on to a raft in angry waters. We were now about a 30-minute drive from Hugo's dad's new Toronto home. During the first week eight-year-old Hugo stayed with me there, he responded to the change in his life by trashing his room before finally letting tears come and allowing me to hug him.
At that time, he also developed a new fear-the fear of death. "I can't sleep. I am thinking about death," he would say when I would catch him with his eyes wide open, in the darkness of his bedroom, his little body tightly surrounded by a cordon of stuffed toys.
Hugo had always considered himself an atheist, ever since his dad had told him at age four that God, like Santa, wasn't real-and that when we die, we turn to dust. For Hugo, it had been just something to say to make adults laugh and confuse his innocent buddies in kindergarten.
But now that he was growing up, he was grasping the concept of time, that he was slowly but surely moving toward the big unknown. I think his fear of death also came about because nothing seemed certain anymore: Our little family was no longer a unit, and our lives were divided into splitcustody homes. When the nights got too hard for Hugo, we'd fall asleep holding on to each other like two monkeys, and all the unknowns stayed away for one more night.
That same year, I'd started going to a new addictions group that met twice a week. The group was a safe place where no hard topic was off the table. The best conversations would often happen after our meetings were over; my favourite person to talk to was Denis, an 80-year-old contrarian and cancer survivor who was considered by everyone else in the group to be a grump.
Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
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Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Calendar Girls
After Molly Baker’s husband died suddenly, her friends organized a year’s worth of support
THE GREAT WILDEBEEST MIGRATION
It's a spectacular sight when countless ruminants cross the Serengeti in search of greener pastures
Soumitra Chatterjee's Tryst with Destiny
The encounter that led a budding actor to a legendary filmmaker, and sparked an iconic creative partnership during the golden age of Bengali cinema
Frozen in Time
The life and work of Vittorio Sella, a pioneer of early mountain photography and the man behind some of the very first images of the Himalayas
HALLUCINATIONS
There was a monkey perched on the IV drip stand to the right of my hospital bed. It scowled at me, but I wasn’t afraid: A brief simian visit was part of my daily routine. I never questioned why there was a monkey in the hospital. I wasn’t lucid enough to recognize that my mind was playing tricks on me.
Music in the Air
Cuba is bursting with sound, and each region moves to its own defining rhythm
SHOULD YOU TRY A DETOX TREATMENT?
It's a popular new-year health habit. But science doesn't support it
Ringing True
He thought his late parents' wedding bands were gone forever
14,000-FOOT MIRACLE
The skydiver fully expected to die when her parachute failed to open. Instead, she's writing the next chapter of her life
I SURVIVED!
THREE UNUSUAL MEDICAL EMERGENCIES, AS TOLD BY THE PEOPLE WHO NEARLY DIED FROM THEM
