How do you deal with death?
My great grandmother just died two days ago.
It was so ironic and paradoxical. I remember writing about her a few days back and I kept, and I mean it, kept thinking about her on Monday.
This is her story:
An elderly relative:
Of all the people in the world, the one person I will never ever forget is my great grandmother. My grandfather’s mother, she was married when she was all of nine years old and she had given birth to her first child when she was thirteen. My first memory of her and my great-grandfather was of them, sitting in their house below my grandparents’ smiling at me and offering me food. My big pati (as I call her) was then around 70 years old. She had a head full of white hair, long and tied in a small bun, her hair thinning, parts of her scalp visible. Her thin face, so much like my grandfather’s and now, my brother’s, was lined with countless wrinkles, her jaw sagging and her beady eyes sharp and wary. Then her mouth was full of teeth but as the years passed, they all fell out until she had none left.
15 years passed, my big thatha with his distinctive one-tooth passed away and my big pati was shunned by her older sons and came to live with my grandfather, the only one kind enough to take her in. As she grew older, the wrinkles on her face deepened, her body, though healthy, began to shrink and her attire, always a nine-yards saree seemed to hang on her frail body. I especially remember this one period when my brother was born and she tried feeding him with her withered, dry breast. My brother screaming his head off and the anguish on my big pati’s face will always remain entrenched in my memory.
Unfortunately for her, she well knew that she was not really wanted by any of her family. Her two other sons barely tolerated her and my thatha could only show pity for her, giving her place to live because she had nowhere else to go. She always craved for attention and as she grew older, her methods grew more eccentric as she became more senile and soon she became nothing but a nuisance to the family.
And then one day, when she was staying in her eldest son’s house, when my Grandparents were away on a holiday, she fell. She fell down three flights of stairs and well, nobody really knew whether she fell or she jumped. She broke her hip and lost her memory. She was then confined to bed rest, where she lies, broken on her bed, her only companion a constant nurse who takes care of her. She doesn’t remember me at all, she thinks my grandfather is her father and my grandmother, her step mother. Her skin has darkened to the colour of charcoal for she has been on a liquid diet which doesn’t give her all the necessary nutrients and her body has shrunk even more, so much that her face resembles a skeleton. Slowly she is withering away and yet she is clinging with a tenacious hold to the life which has done nothing for her except cause her pain. She has prayed and prayed for death to come and take her and yet she lies there, emaciated with bed sores the size of golf balls. She’s like a child now and there is really nothing we can do except give her as much care as we can and hope that when she finally does go, she finds the peace she has been so desperately searching for.
And so she is gone. I remember my mother telling me that it would be good for her to go, it would be a relief, not only for my grand-parents, but for her. And I remember thinking how sad it was that nobody liked her, nobody cared for her. And now that she's dead, everyone is suddenly overcome with a sense of loss because she has always been there, hovering in the background, smiling that toothless smile at us, even though she was a klepto and senile to boot!
::sigh:: I don't know if I'm going to miss her. I was never very clost to her for that. Living in Bangalore made me get a little isolated from her. But there is going to be a gaping hole in my grand parents house in Madras which I know I'm going to feel when I visit them. Which won't be too far away...
It was so ironic and paradoxical. I remember writing about her a few days back and I kept, and I mean it, kept thinking about her on Monday.
This is her story:
An elderly relative:
Of all the people in the world, the one person I will never ever forget is my great grandmother. My grandfather’s mother, she was married when she was all of nine years old and she had given birth to her first child when she was thirteen. My first memory of her and my great-grandfather was of them, sitting in their house below my grandparents’ smiling at me and offering me food. My big pati (as I call her) was then around 70 years old. She had a head full of white hair, long and tied in a small bun, her hair thinning, parts of her scalp visible. Her thin face, so much like my grandfather’s and now, my brother’s, was lined with countless wrinkles, her jaw sagging and her beady eyes sharp and wary. Then her mouth was full of teeth but as the years passed, they all fell out until she had none left.
15 years passed, my big thatha with his distinctive one-tooth passed away and my big pati was shunned by her older sons and came to live with my grandfather, the only one kind enough to take her in. As she grew older, the wrinkles on her face deepened, her body, though healthy, began to shrink and her attire, always a nine-yards saree seemed to hang on her frail body. I especially remember this one period when my brother was born and she tried feeding him with her withered, dry breast. My brother screaming his head off and the anguish on my big pati’s face will always remain entrenched in my memory.
Unfortunately for her, she well knew that she was not really wanted by any of her family. Her two other sons barely tolerated her and my thatha could only show pity for her, giving her place to live because she had nowhere else to go. She always craved for attention and as she grew older, her methods grew more eccentric as she became more senile and soon she became nothing but a nuisance to the family.
And then one day, when she was staying in her eldest son’s house, when my Grandparents were away on a holiday, she fell. She fell down three flights of stairs and well, nobody really knew whether she fell or she jumped. She broke her hip and lost her memory. She was then confined to bed rest, where she lies, broken on her bed, her only companion a constant nurse who takes care of her. She doesn’t remember me at all, she thinks my grandfather is her father and my grandmother, her step mother. Her skin has darkened to the colour of charcoal for she has been on a liquid diet which doesn’t give her all the necessary nutrients and her body has shrunk even more, so much that her face resembles a skeleton. Slowly she is withering away and yet she is clinging with a tenacious hold to the life which has done nothing for her except cause her pain. She has prayed and prayed for death to come and take her and yet she lies there, emaciated with bed sores the size of golf balls. She’s like a child now and there is really nothing we can do except give her as much care as we can and hope that when she finally does go, she finds the peace she has been so desperately searching for.
And so she is gone. I remember my mother telling me that it would be good for her to go, it would be a relief, not only for my grand-parents, but for her. And I remember thinking how sad it was that nobody liked her, nobody cared for her. And now that she's dead, everyone is suddenly overcome with a sense of loss because she has always been there, hovering in the background, smiling that toothless smile at us, even though she was a klepto and senile to boot!
::sigh:: I don't know if I'm going to miss her. I was never very clost to her for that. Living in Bangalore made me get a little isolated from her. But there is going to be a gaping hole in my grand parents house in Madras which I know I'm going to feel when I visit them. Which won't be too far away...