The hospital asked me to translate “terminal”

Dear Delyara, I am seventeen, and today a doctor asked me to tell my mother that her cancer is terminal. The hospital interpreter was delayed, and my mother kept looking at me because I am the one who translates everything: rent letters, school forms, insurance calls, labels at the pharmacy. The doctor spoke slowly, using words like progression, comfort, and months. I knew what each word meant separately. Together, they became something I did not want to place inside my mother’s language. She asked, “Is the treatment working?” I told her the doctor said they needed to change the plan. It was not exactly a lie, but it was not the truth he had handed me. When the interpreter finally arrived, she explained everything properly. My mother looked at me afterward and said, “You knew before I did.” There was no anger in her voice. That was worse. Tonight, I am doing homework at the kitchen table while she sleeps in the next room. I keep thinking there should be an age when a child becomes old enough to translate death for a parent. Seventeen cannot be it.