There is something about these days…there is a living otherness to them.
They are about her vivid thoughts…
A bellying pool of memories. Some predictable, others not. Of her life in Rangoon in the 1930s (she is adamant about not calling Rangoon by its new name Yangon, saying the new name is no name as far as she is concerned). Of there being no flush-out toilets, running water or electricity. Where transportation meant a ride in the Victoria, a low-bodied vehicle with one forward-facing seat for two passengers and a raised driver’s seat supported by an iron frame, all beneath a calash top. She recalls how she and her siblings sat huddled on the floor with other children of the neighborhood while her parents sat elegantly on the long seat. She talks of her growing-up years in Nagpur in central India with a flock of cousins and an indulgent aunt and uncle, and her schooling there in a local Tamil-medium school, and of being cycled daily, lovingly, to the gate by her uncle. Then come her recollections of her marriage in Bombay (she will again not say Mumbai, its current name), the birth of her two children, her active working life, her twenty-six years in New Delhi, and her grand-mothering days. Then there are those delirious visions of her husband, my father, appearing every night, young and splendorous as he was when she first met him. Saying this and saying that. Never the old, grizzled husband, who left her twelve years ago. It is always his young, splendid avatar.
They are about her surges into the present…
Her deliberate pulling back of her spinning out-of-control thoughts, by latitudes and then by degrees, that bump into her present-day life. Of her stacking and re-stacking of newspapers by date. Of her pushing their edges into alignment. Perhaps, in a bid to guarantee to her life a shape of order and nimbleness to her mind. Of her talking to her son, my brother, of daily happenings in the country, conversations based on careful notes made in her diary, in her spidery writing, from newspaper and polemic television reports. This, maybe, to avert nights in the middle of the day, the mushroomy cloudbursts of grey, the dull bursts of gloom, as the continual indeterminate anxiety and the crests of fear. As also the things that bubble within and consume her on days, and the tears she sheds within that only I know about, dry-eyed as she remains to the outsiders.
They are about the inglorious routines of feeding, cleaning, using the toilet, and putting her to bed…
She hates the dependency we force her into. Even in her bewilderment she knows she will never spring back to normalcy or be light-footed as she once used to be or regain her buoyant spirit. She does not fool herself into believing that her loose skin will return to its earlier contours. It casts everything, every action, hers and ours, into nonsense as her body morphs into something else and a walker becomes her life support. Thus entangled, with her private chores now appallingly public, she loses her sense of identity and independence.
They are about us protecting her from COVID -19, but not from loneliness…
Her isolation with only me as her caretaker is safe but insulating in these pandemic days. The lack of social contact and interaction could become dangerous for her, the power of a touch, a hug and a listening ear are completely missing from her life. Aloneness, after all, is known to become a disease of its own.
They are about a messy mix of her past, my brother’s, his wife’s and my spouse’s and my present and her two granddaughters and their future…
This as we all scramble and flounder to get her to some sort of wellness and put back her dissembled life into some kind of order. I, by always being in her room with her. My spouse by being unobtrusively there for me. My brother and wife calling every day to check on our well-being. And her two grand-daughters using video calls, to own their source, their source of influence, to hold on to the shapes, sounds, textures and gestures of their grandmother’s life, to its very last remnants, in every way they can. Ironically, even though both work in the healthcare sector they know they can do little about the brick-faced fate that awaits her, one that holds out degeneration and worse. Discussions about hospitalization for her taper off when they understand that she has been explicit in her desire to leave for the beyond from home, from her bed, not from some sterilized, impersonal hospital ward of chrome, marble and disinfectant, where at best an adopted air of friendliness and care would prevail, one that would leave her feeling cold, scared, lonely and uncared for. We all understand that from now on it is to be all about her needs and not ours. There are to be no ‘what ifs’, however right they may be and however strongly we feel about our convictions.
They are about our love being physical and emotional and yet pivoting on responsibility and practicality…
We as a family are all bound by fate, let’s say by an accident of birth, as we are by circumstances into a teetering partnership of sorts. Medicines, money, bank accounts, death certificate, pyre wood, priests, disproportionate caring burdens… are part of our crazy, uneasy familial dialogues, part of our exchanges, part of the situation we are trapped in. We shape our thoughts with words sometimes but do not in many cases. Many of these notions remain ours only, lurking darkly within our minds, awkward, muted, festering, and mostly we put them away into dark, deep vaults for fear of them escaping. Speaking them would be vulgar and pre-mature, right? Though we all know we really should be open and pragmatic about these issues. And, yet, sometimes, without warning, our sheltered thoughts leap out of their vaults and erupt as sentences from our mouths.
They are about prayers, not on her lips but mine. And others in the family…
That she goes painlessly and unknowingly into the space beyond. That the boundaries of her personhood melt into the larger consciousness, into a symbiosis with her surroundings, in a way that is happily transformative for her. That her inter-being with the larger form of existence be easy. That these days and moments not become for me ones that are sodden with fear and frozen with inaction with all the desperate anxieties of all caretakers coming alive. That I should not be left alone and hapless to see her gasping for life, nor suffocate within as I see her dissolve into nothing. And, that nothing else, no other disaster, boomerang simultaneously as I see her to the finish line.
They are about wanting to hold on to her. In any form that she is in…
Yet there is the realization among us that with dissolution and decay fringing her life, it is better to not hold back the tides. That it is better to let them wash over her when it is time. The loss of her life and legacy will be felt. We know our pain will be raw, brutal, and messy. And that all her five sisters will share in our pain, as will our larger family. We know we will need to collectively grapple with our sense of helplessness, our mortality, and with our realization that where there is life there will be death. Will the belief that death is the finish line, the notion that nothing emerges from the ashes, help? Or will our faith that she will reach out to us from beyond the ashes and the veil of the unknown prevail?
Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
