She
was a small, frail, but proud woman. They
were two weeks away from their fifty-sixth wedding anniversary when she became
a widow. Not that it was a surprise, she knew it was coming ever since he was
diagnosed with cancer. He was pushing ninety and at his age, conventional
cancer therapy was almost a no-no, he was put on palliative care, and in such care,
he remained until his last breath.
She
bid a silent farewell to the body of her companion of more than half a century
as the hearse left the house on his final journey. Some close relatives kept
her company while her son and other family members performed the last rites for
her husband at the crematorium. But she did not cry. All she said was, “He’s gone.” Then kept
quiet.
A
few months earlier, when he had been hospitalized for the first time, and she
had gone to visit him, he had told her to get used to living with her son. She found
that paradigm shift too hard to digest. The proud woman that she was, she had,
till then, always fiercely held on to her will to stay in her own house, away
from the children and grandchildren, live life on her own terms, and have periodic
meetings with the family.
There
comes a time in a person’s life, when living alone is impossible, and one has
to have a support system built around oneself. Her son tried to build one
around her; after her husband passed away, and she had to come and live with
him and his family in the apartment in the city. He hired a couple of nurses to
take care of her night and day. She resented them – saying her “bouma”
(daughter-in-law) and grandchildren were good enough company. But he insisted,
and the nurses continued.
She
hobbled around the apartment with a walker and spent her days reading books and
newspapers, and sometimes, when perhaps, her memories came flooding back,
heaved a sigh, and kept on reading. Her grandchildren always made her smile;
she would recite Sanskrit slokas – slokas that her son had heard from
childhood… most of them extolled the virtues of being a mother, some talked
about righteousness, while the rest were about mundane everyday events.
Her
short-term memory began to fail. She would have lunch and then ask for it
again, vehemently arguing that she was yet to eat. By and by people noticed
that she would keep reading the same page in a book or news item over and over
again, throughout the day, and if that piece of information caught her fancy,
kept telling it to everyone in the house. Over time, her long-term memory too,
began playing tricks. One day she said that she had seen snowfall – in an area
where no snow had ever fallen in history. When her son said that it was not
possible, she retorted that it was before he was born.
At
the prayer meeting on the first anniversary of his father’s death, she attended
the ceremony and asked her son, “Is it one year already ? You must be joking…
check your calendar.” When people explained that one year had indeed passed,
she said, “I thought he was still in hospital.”
One
day her son asked her, “Do you remember Dad always saying that he built the
house in the suburbs so that the grandchildren would have a place to play ?”
She responded by saying that she wanted to visit that house in the suburbs once
again, where she had spent the last thirty years. That weekend they all trooped
down to the place, and then emerged a crisis of sorts when she steadfastly
refused to leave. “You can take my dead body out,” was her firm reply. No
amount of requests, pleading, threats was working. Her son and his family had
to leave her there that night, with the caretaker’s family for company.
The
next morning came a desperate phone call from the caretaker; he and his wife
simply could not make her eat, or sleep the previous night, and given her frail
health, things could get serious. Her son took leave from office, and went down
to the house – she had to be physically carried to the car and brought back to
the city. Curses flowed freely – she cursed her son for the abomination, and
said she never thought this day would ever come…she said she would write a
letter to the world telling them of the “torture” she was being subjected to by
him.
Back
in the apartment, she once again entered into a shell, reading newspapers,
watching the birds on the trees around, and uttering the slokas…. Her memory
went from bad to worse… she would go into the toilet in the morning and forget
to come out… over time the nurses had to prevent her from locking the door from
inside, and sometimes they had to physically carry her out after the morning’s
ablutions.
He
talked to the doctor who was attending on her, asking if a few days in hospital
would improve things. His response was a clear “no”, and he stressed on the
point that dementia patients should not be put in hospitals.
And
then she started falling over, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her face, even
with a walker around her. One such fall was particularly bad; her face remained
swollen for days.
“Do
you remember Dad ?”, he asked her one day with great trepidation.
“Well,
I am angry that he left me and went away, the only good thing is that it has
not been for long, just a few days.” This was more than four years after his
death.
Six
weeks before her eighty-third birthday, she woke up one morning and said she
was not feeling well. She asked her son to check her blood pressure, as she was
moved to a chair beside the bed. And, while he was doing so, she passed away,
silently. Just like that. Sitting on the chair. Small, frail, but proud, as she
always had been.
***
Dementia,
to my mind, is perhaps as much a curse as a blessing in disguise.
***
