The most beautiful and saddest lie in the world. Gezsa knew that her son Omar had not won the battle against cancer, but she did the most painful thing a mother can be faced with: keeping her own sorrow to herself so that he could leave happy.
Instead of telling him that there was nothing more to be done, she made him believe that the treatment had worked and that he could ring the hospital’s victory bell. The one many patients ring when they finish a difficult stage and return home with hope.
But in Omar’s case, the reality was different. His mother knew they would return home to spend his last days together, even though he didn’t know it. “How do you tell your son that he’s going home to spend his last days with his family?”, she said.
Gezsa also explained why she chose to lie to him: “You say what you have to say to protect your child”. And perhaps that is the most painful part of all, because it was not a lie to deceive him, it was a lie to care for him until the very last moment.
Gezsa chose to carry that truth alone. She smiled when she probably wanted to break down, celebrated when inside she was saying goodbye, and gave her son a victory that the illness could no longer give him.
And that is the heartbreaking part: sometimes a mother does not tell the whole truth, only the truth her child needs in order to leave in peace.