A million dollar question

I thought the whole of my mind’s capacity is immense and I always believed that emotionally, I’m a very strong man. But from past couple of weeks, my emotional weakness has intensified within me and I’ve started to know and feel things that I’ve never known or felt before. I’m trying to refuse to venture into the thought that I’ve conceded defeat, but I’m not able to fight it. I’ve never seen deaths in my family/friends circle, I’ve never seen anyone experience hardship and physical agony this hopelessly. My granny is on death bed from a few weeks and this is the source of my disturbance.

Good old days of my Grandma

For the records, she is 93 and is an Alzheimer’s disease patient from past couple of years. She was fit and fine, she used to read The Deccan Herald everyday and with her little insights to what is happening around, she used to tell me how messed up the world is, today. Things changed slowly; she lost control over her memory, she started hallucinating and could recall only things from past. But all that was still fine with us because we, at home, were quite used to her absentmindedness and were pretty much accustomed to her awkward behavior. In fact, at times, when every other person in the family retaliated to her violent behavior (she was really uncontrollable sometimes), I nonchalantly disregarded it. Things have changed so much in the past few months. She is lying there, in the corner of a room, just breathing. She is making an attempt to speak something but none of us are able to make any sense of it. She is not recognizing any of us. Her hands and legs have crumbled being in the same position; her motor functions are reduced by more than 90%. She has bed sores over her back. She’s going through an absolute realm of pain & suffering and she is not even able to express it. Imagine how relentless it is that if a housefly sits on her nose, she has to make peace with it instead of shooing it away!

With grandchildren, on her 90th birthday

In the midst of it, a good number of my grandmother’s kin are visiting my home out of purest form of reverence and compassion, for the sweet and adorable lady that my granny was through her life. Majority of them talk about how active she was during the prime of her life. One of my cousins had nick named her “The Mask” because she was so swift that she used to get coffee from the kitchen like a whirlwind.  Some are making desperate attempts to show that they also care by pretending to sham and offer help. And of course there those one hundred percent pure assholes too who are more interested in watching Kannada soaps than empathizing with us for what happened. I don’t know if she can hear at all; because if she really does, she would regret having met these people in her life for the rest of her life. Very few are compassionate and offering every bit of help they could, in monetary and sensitive terms, to extend her death and keep her alive.

We have hired a caretaker to look after her. A paramedic comes home every week to assess her health. We are all doing our best to keep her alive. But I think this is exactly what is making me very poignant. “Are we extending the duration of her suffering by trying to keep her alive?” I tried to discuss this with senior citizens of the family. Some quoted Gita and talked about “karma” or “soul” and others gave reference to some gradation called “taaratamya”. I don’t have much insight into these. I am trying to convince myself by thinking that what they say may be true. The fact that they have seen more deaths and they don’t seem to get unbalanced by this at all, really surprise me.

A few days before she was bedridden

I’ve always seen people offering prayers for someone to get well. We’ve always been taught to hope for other’s wellbeing. But here I am, standing, praying to god to do exactly the opposite. I don’t know if I am responding more emotionally than is justified or assessing too highly of the scenario; I’ve been pondering over this for some time. The more I think, the more I realize that death is the most complicated thing I’ve ever come across in my life so far.

Every time when I am home, when I sit by her side, feeding her food, when I look at her crumbled legs and hands, this question boggles my brain: Should we continue to take good care of her which will only prolong her suffering or should we stop being so conscientious and put an end to her suffering early and be culpable and guilty for the rest of our lives? This, trust me, is a million dollar question!

I’m badly trying to restore some sanity to my brain!