A Drive to the Sea, A Memory for a Lifetime
After years of working with adult patients, moving to the Children’s Palliative Care team felt like entering a different world. With adults, we often help them make peace with their past. With children, we help them find joy in the present moment. I understood this difference truly on 27th October 2026.
We went for a home visit to see a little girl. She was the only child of her parents. She couldn’t speak, but, she understood the world in her own beautiful way, and required complete support for all her daily needs. She had lived with complex medical conditions since birth.
When we entered, she was sitting quietly in her chair. Her mother was right beside her, as always. Her presence was her daughter’s entire world. Her father was also at home, a fisherman who had not been able to go to sea for weeks due to rain.
What struck me was her silence and her mother’s love. A love that is present every minute, every hour, without a break, without rest, for years together. The mother had not stepped out for herself, had not slept peacefully, had not known what respite means. And yet, there was so much love and tenderness in that small house.
We decided to do something very simple. We asked them if they would like to come with us to the beach in our vehicle.
And that simple drive changed everything.
For us it was a ten-minute drive. For that little girl, it was the world opening up. The wind touched her face. She could hear the waves. For a child who saw the same four walls every day, the vast sea must have felt like magic. And for her mother, who carried the weight of caregiving alone, those few minutes at the beach were a moment to just breathe, to be not just a caregiver, but a mother enjoying the sea with her daughter.
I will never forget their smiles. The little girl was calm, happy, peaceful. Her mother was laughing, thanking us with tears in her eyes. In that moment, there was no illness, no hospital, no worries. There was just a mother, her daughter, and the sea.
Coming from adult palliative care, I was taught to measure care in medicines and symptom relief. This child taught me that care is also measured in happiness. In giving a child a memory beyond her home and hospital. In giving a mother a moment to feel that she and her child were not forgotten.
That day I went for a home visit, but I returned with a life lesson.
Palliative care is not always about adding more days to life. Sometimes, it is about adding more life to a single day. And that day at the beach, we did just that.
– Nidhi H. Nair
Social Office, Children’s Palliative Care, Pallium India
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