Woman Gets Dying Wish to See Son : Reunion: Terminally ill mother was in a coma when 9-year-old arrived at bedside. She opened her eyes after hearing his voice.

Tears streamed down Sonia Siguenza’s face.

In the early hours of Saturday, her husband, Israel, granted Sonia’s dying wish by delivering her 9-year-old son, Walter, to her bedside. At the sound of her son’s voice, Sonia, who has been in a coma for three weeks, opened her eyes.

It had been almost two years since mother and son had seen each other, since Walter was sent to live with his grandparents in their native El Salvador after doctors discovered that Sonia, 25, was terminally ill from an infectious blood disease.

Walter arrived at Los Angeles International Airport just before midnight Friday, into the waiting arms of his father and the lights, microphones and cameras of the media. He handled the press conference well, but a short time later, when he saw his mother connected to tubes and life-support machines at the intensive care unit of Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, young Walter’s brave front crumbled.

Sonia has been mostly unresponsive during the last few weeks. Walter walked in and said, “Hi, mami , como estas ?” Sonia opened her eyes and moved her mouth as if to speak.

But the words would not come. Then Walter began sobbing quietly, stroking his mother’s hands over and over as she lay in a blue-green hospital gown, tubes in her nose and IV needles in her arms.

“Don’t cry, my love,” Israel Siguenza told his wife, tenderly wiping her tears. “You’re going to get better now.

“Don’t cry anymore, my son,” he said to Walter.

As difficult as it was, it was a moment Israel Siguenza had worked hard to bring about.

Three weeks ago, he flew to San Salvador to ask the U.S. Embassy there to grant the boy a visa. But he was told that Walter could only get to California through normal immigration procedures, which could take two years. Even after Siguenza offered to give up his own permanent residency status, the State Department would not grant him a “non-immigrant visa,” because they feared the boy would not return to El Salvador.

Finally, Siguenza and his wife’s doctor, Michael Fitzgibbons, asked U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson for help, and after Wilson’s intervention, the INS on Thursday agreed to grant the boy a temporary “humanitarian parole” so that he could visit his mother.

“I’m glad to know there are still people out there who want to help,” Siguenza said. “One of my wife’s main wishes before she leaves us was for Walter to come and see her,” he said.