Prof. Surekha Sinha, speaking at a conference in Bhopal, circa 1990.
Nov 7, 2010 (2 AM IST)
My mother’s body has finally run out of breaths. It means an end to a six-year long battle with cancer, to bouts of extreme pain, to a light that shone so bright for sixty-four years. It also means an end to six years of calling India every night, of worrying when she sounded weak, of pushing her to keep fighting the pain, the loneliness, the dejections, of the relief when she sounded strong, of being on standby for the two-day journey across the oceans when the call came.
The dreaded call came in early August this year. Metastasis had claimed more than 70% of her lungs and the tumour on the side was pressing on her kidney and liver, causing organ failure. With the help of my ever supportive partner and the posse of friends and colleagues, I was able to drop everything and reach Jaipur from Edmonton within 50 hours of the phone call.
She was semi conscious, eyes unseeing. Heart wrenchingly fleeting flickers of recognition followed by relapse into some mysterious depths of her subconscious. She kept calling to her long-dead parents feebly – Amma, Babu. In my friend Sona, she did get a parent back for those two weeks.
My mother had expressly forbidden us to attach a feeding tube to her. The only way to keep her from starving in this state was to feed her liquid renal food every couple of hours. Sona managed to do just that, despite her frail protests. She supervised the numerous chores of keeping her body clean and free from bedsores, and kept a constant vigil by her side until I arrived and was settled enough to take over my mother’s care with the help of the rest of the family.
My mother defied all medical odds. Her vitals started to normalize a few days after my arrival. The doctors told us she was hanging by a thread, but she clung to that thread, with all her might. As hours turned into days and weeks, we started contemplating long-term care at a nursing facility in her beloved Prem Niketan – a hybrid institution, which housed a school, an old-age home, nursing care, and a hospital. Mrs. Parnami was her good friend, who ran the place like an extended family living together in gentle harmony. My mother had been associated with Prem Niketan and the Cancer Hospital for years and had not stopped volunteering at these institutions even when her physical condition started to worsen.
As soon as she was able to talk, my mother told the palliative care doctor that she would like to move to Prem Niketan once she is able to walk to the washroom on her own. The doctor gently reminded her that walking might be an unreasonable goal to aspire to. My mother retorted, “I will show all of you that within ten days I will walk again.” I spoke to the doctor outside with our hearts breaking at her indomitable optimism. She did show us all right! We moved to Prem Niketan before the ten days were up. The very first day of being there, she used her walker to go to the washroom and never allowed a bed-pan near her.
There were many personal victories in the weeks that followed. She finished editing her ninth book that was in press when she took ill. She started eating normal food again. She was able to take short walks with the help of her walker and a helper. The challenges were far too many though. She had to be on a continuous supply of oxygen, morphine and phentanyl. The metastasis was claiming more of her body, and the episodes of pain were clustered closer together. She had two regrets, that she was unable to write or type anymore, and that her organs cannot be transplanted due to cancer, despite which she remained firm in her decision to donate her body to the medical hospital.
Then in a dramatic turn of events, a literary society decided to confer an honour for her literary achievement. From planning her funeral a couple of weeks ago, we were suddenly planning a felicitation event for her.
More than two hundred and fifty people came to the event. Many speeches were made, short and heartfelt expressions of what our mother had meant to people as a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, an activist, and a friend. She sat ramrod straight for those five hours of speeches, photo-sessions, and feasting. At one point, I saw her fussing with her oxygen tube. I thought she needed to adjust it, but she was removing it, “picture acchi nahin aayegi” – it will ruin the photograph. I looked away to wipe a tear.
She was only sixty-four years old, but medically, she was not supposed to be alive this long, let alone with such good quality of life. She had tried all her old tricks of coping – ignoring pain, using external anchors to distract herself, and philosophy to rationalize this extra time. Nevertheless, every other day, she would get an intense bout of pain making her writhe in breathless agony. We would run from nurse to resident doctor to specialist to the palliative doctor to put together strategies for managing the excruciating pain. Everyone wondering whether this was the beginning of the inevitable end. Within a few hours though, the intensity of the pain would subside and she would recover enough to fight another day.
Most of the time, I tried to keep up a mild chatter with her when she was awake or alone. After every painful episode though, she would hold my hand tight for several minutes without a word. I had nothing to tell her during those moments. Once, I broke the silence by asking her if she would like an ice cream. “Yes, pistachio”, she lit up. After that, the nursing home fridge would always have at least one of her favourite desserts in it – misri mawa, milk cake, fini, ghewar, kalakand, anjeer burfi, kaju katli, badam chakki, pista roll. Although she could not eat more than a couple of spoons of anything, she loved sharing the treats with the staff and her visitors. She loved the steady stream of visitors that ebbed and flowed throughout the day, although it was increasingly hard for her to remain focused for more than a couple of minutes. She was lucid, but battle worn. She was also mystified by this final phase of her short life.
For her, everything in this world has a reason, a specific meaning, which needed to be carefully unearthed through logical reasoning. So while she accepted her disease as `the nature (dharma) of the body’, she could not find a convincing explanation for why this bodily life was extended without giving her the ability to do anything with that extra time.
After three months of being with her every day, it was time for me to return to Canada. She was distraught. I had left India fifteen years ago, returning like clockwork every December for what I called `my annual pilgrimage home’. I could see now that she made it home. I was loosing my mother and my home in one single cruel sweep. We hugged and cried together for the last time.
As was her wont, once I had left, she collected herself and got back to the task of the daily battle with the disease. I spoke to her twice a day every day after returning home to Canada. Six days later, it was Diwali. She sounded strong and excited about going home for a few hours and spending some time with her two grand daughters, Aditi and Adya. She loved her house. It was a gift from her mother, which she had spent the last two decades renovating and making her own. She had a lovely time at home with her family, returning to the nursing home content and happy. I tried calling her in the evening but could not get through due to the communication traffic jam on Diwali night. Instead, I managed to get hold of my brothers who filled in the details.
Her helper at the nursing home answered my morning phone call. She said that my mother had slipped into a coma sometime during the night. My aunt, brothers, and their wives were on their way to the nursing home. All her vitals were normal, but her breath was slowing down to 7-8 per minute. Remarkably, she showed no signs of pain or breathing distress. Throughout the day, they tried different combinations of medicines to revive her. I called every hour to stay connected. At 2 AM IST today, she took her last breath, peacefully.
It was hard to see her going through the cycles of pain and I had wished every time for it to be her last battle. I too could not see any reason for the slow moving end of this generous and selfless person. As I write this, desperately trying to embrace my grief by pouring it into words, I finally feel I know the reason behind the delayed ending.
My mother gave selflessly and limitlessly – to her parents, her husband, her sister, her children, her students, and anyone who could use whatever she had. She was emotionally very expressive, but for her generation and milieu, `public display of affection’ was a derisive term. So, while people felt free to express anger and impatience, they held back in conveying affection in words or gestures. Love was always `implied’ in her world but rarely articulated, particularly toward an individual.
The last three months of her life, while she was trying to unravel the meaning of her extra breaths, she was being showered by uncharacteristically expressive displays of love and affection from everyone in her life. Her children, their spouses, and her only sister had dropped everything to camp by her side. Family members, including those who belonged to her vast family of the heart, had traveled from hundreds of kilometers to visit her for a day. Her friends, colleagues, students, neighbours, and acquaintances visited her frequently. Prem Niketan residents and staff had became another extended family who gathered around her when she could talk, and cried with her when she was in pain. The love of the people whose lives she had touched was no longer just implied. Love was all around her, beautiful, boundless, and uncomplicated, just like her.
This reassuring realization makes me pause. Exhausted, I close my eyes and suddenly feel like I am inside my mother’s head. I am thousands of kilometers away from where she took her last breath mere minutes ago. She appears to be standing on a high ground, but I am unsure of the dimensional space. Everything is swathed in a translucent light, so bright that I cannot make out anything until it moves. There is absolute peace. I see my mother’s raised arms, which release something that looks like a bird. The bird-like shape is soaring upwards and I am getting closer to it. I can see the individual wings and then luminous feathers as they gently flap, creating and flying in a stream of light. I become the bird and then I become the stream of light that is flowing without any end or beginning. Then on the screen of my consciousness, I see this light turning into water, valleys, mountains, plants, people, trees, birds, minerals.
I would like to believe that my mother has just shared with me the beginning of her new journey. Just as she used to sing excitedly her new composition, read a new poem, discuss a new article, and debate a new thought with me for as long as I can remember.
May you have yet another eventful and purposeful journey, Ma.
Until we meet again.
Your daughter,
Meenal
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