(1)
“What time is it?” He had barely gotten into the room when his mother asked.
“Its almost ten”, he replied with a weary tone. The weight of the days and nights spent in hospital and at work as taking its toll.
“Ten already?” She said in mix of surprise yet exhaustion, as if this was the inevitable moment she had been waiting for.
The next thing he heard was a mix of loud beeps and the shouts of the doctor. “I need you to step out of this room right away!” The doctor burst out with an imminent sense of urgency as he shoved the young man away from the bedside. There was a flood of nurses and doctors with all kinds of equipment running into the room. Chaos couldn’t be better explained.
Confusion clouded his mind as he carried himself out of the room, the relentless beeps still echoing in his ears.
“What happened?” asked his fiancé.
“I don’t know… she… she just collapsed, and they told me to go out.”
Standing at the ICU counter, the computer screen displaying vital signs for the ICU patients continued to add to the sounds. It was there before, but somehow it became louder versus the previous times. He stared at the line that read 3A; his mother’s room number.
(2)
He was racing his father to the hospital. Carrying him inside with great difficulty, he placed him onto a chair and rushed for a bed from the emergency room. The medical staff suddenly swarmed around them lifting his father to the stretcher.
“He’s had a heart attack,” someone told him as they scrambled for the medicines to inject into his father’s frail body. Quickly piercing his body with all kinds of needles and drips, they left to attend to another patient, assuring him that the doctor is coming soon, and instructions to sign forms as they shift his father to the ICU.
His father’s lips were moving. He put his ears onto them.
“Its time for me to go, son,” he whispered faintly. Sometimes a faint voice can have echoes that are louder than all other sounds lasting for eternity.
(3)
His gaze was fixed to the monitor with a barrage of numbers and graphs dancing before his eyes. Amidst the chaos, one number stood out- the heart rate. The one number that stood for the uncertainty that was all around him.
And it was going down. There were silhouettes of men and women surrounding a body in the room- his mother’s body. The heart rate would go up right after her body sprung but then the number would fall even lower than where it was. Every beep sounded like a siren in war times, telling him that there was a fierce fight going on in that room. He avoided looking at the silhouettes anymore.
Numbers don’t lie, and they are impersonal. He never forgot that lesson after that.
(4)
“Everything will be fine, Dad,” he whispered with a voice that betrayed the conviction of the words. His father looked at his aghast face, a face still young, still inexperienced, still to have the dust of the battles of life become part of its features. But this was the one battle he was not willing to fight and yet he will have to. Did his father know this? Maybe, may be not. No one can ever know, can they.
As he placed his hand on his father’s head to comfort him, his mother walked in, piercing the sound of the unspoken words. He remembered that he had to handle her right now. With a forced smile, he comforted his mother, assuring her that all is well, as he hid his worst fears behind the mask of composure he had just acquired for life.
(5)
It’s amazing, the dance of the heartbeat. It goes up and down, expanding and contracting, and we are only able to see a number. And right now, the number was not looking good. It was constantly slipping away, now in 30s, then in 20s.
“She is dying,” he thought to himself. “But I am sure she will survive, she is resilient.” Another thought. And just so the heartbeat jumped back up from twenties to mid-forties. There was a glimmer of a flickering hope right there. He reconsidered believing in the possibility of a miracle as the heart rate held steady, even climbing up a number or two.
But dreams are dreams. Like bubbles, they burst. The heart rate slipped away, echoing a silence in a hollow emptiness after nothingness occurs.
(6)
The doctors took his father into the ICU. His mother had gone home too. Alone in the quiet corridor, he still believed that miracles existed. A world without his father was unfathomable. “Surely baba will be fine,” he told himself.
Death is a possibility, but to him, it was a very distant possibility. He sat there, in a denial that was pushed through by the need for positivity and determination.
“I am just a teenager; I am sure dads don’t die this early.” All kinds of thoughts kept racing into his head. “And it’s my mom who is ill, not my dad. This is not going to happen.”
But beneath the thin layer of determination, lay his vulnerable self, unsure and veering off to the edge of despair. He clung to hope, more as a survival tactic than the actual possibility itself.
(7)
The monitor blared incessantly. It was shouting, pleading, telling the doctors to do something! At least the monitor was shouting, thank God. For he was silent, numb, and just a spectator, just a witness to the numbers going down. Each blip sank his heart further, and yet his numbness did not let him feel anything. He knew that there were others looking at him, searching for signs of hope on a face that had learnt to not show anything. But in that moment, his world had contracted to the confines of that hospital corridor, where time stood still with him just waiting as he had waited in that ICU room five years ago.
(8)
The doctor walked out.
He looked up expectantly. But there was something about the doctor that was uneasy.
“I am sorry,” the doctor said under his breath. “He is no more.”
That was a shock his body and mind still wasn’t willing to go through. That was the wave that broke the dams of composure and hope. There was disbelief, anguish, devastation as he tried to process this.
“He is no more? What… what do you mean?” Still unable to wrap his head around a version of reality he didn’t think would ever exist he blurted out, his voice choking. “You just took him in there. That’s not possible.” He stammered with disbelief.
And then there was as if a lightning bolt had struck his mind, plunging him into reality, forcing him to deal with the present. “Okay, he is no more! But… but… How will I tell this to my mother, she will have a heart attack!”
He would have collapsed had it not been for his cousin who had just walked in.
(9)
The doctor walked out.
He looked up, blank. There was something about the doctor that was uneasy. It was eerily familiar of a scene from a past life.
“I am sorry,” the doctor uttered softly under his breath. “She is no more.”
He stayed there, numb and suffocated, looking at the zero on the screen. 3A was zero and the silence was deafening. He was still stuck in the nightmare.
He wouldn’t have collapsed even though others rushed to him to support him. He had been too strong for too long.
(10)
With a disbelief and a numbness that was pervading him, he went in to see his father, lying breathless on the bed, still wearing the same clothes. They had covered his face with a white sheet. Gently, he uncovered his face, and body, putting his hands on the cold forehead which had been warm just a few minutes before. Leaning in, he kissed and pressed his forehead against his father’s, unwilling to say goodbye. Reluctantly, covered his face once more and turned to call up his family.
It was time to man-up and face the world, yet the thought of facing his mother and breaking the news to her was still wreaking havoc inside his gut.
(11)
The doctor’s words opened doors to a sea of people. People with sympathetic faces, an expression he was familiar with and hated whole-heartedly. They offered him empty condolences in hushed tone, meaning well to comfort him. And yet it was all too uncomfortable for him.
“I need to take care of the next steps,” he mechanically pushed everyone away.
He walked out, phone in his hand and started calling his relatives.
“Hi, mom just died.”
“Hi, mom just died.”
He said it so many times, it became mechanical. People stared at him, and he could see how they saw how heartless a son he was. He’d stopped caring about them five years ago.
(12)
When he got into his home with his father’s body, he was taken aback. What was just a few hours ago a familiar setting was suddenly a place filled with mourners. And he couldn’t find his mother. He made his way to the farthest room in the house, where his parents had slept just a few hours ago. She sat on the same bed, surrounded by women- relatives, neighbors. He was desperate to be alone with her, tell her that he was broken, devastated, that he wanted to shout, cry, and put his head in her lap the way he would when he was still young. But there were others who were hugging him like a leech, and not letting him come close to the one person who he needed the most. Barely reaching and hugging his mother, there were unrecognized pats all over his back, telling him to be patient, and be there for his mother.
“What are these guys thinking? He was getting angry. “All I want is to be with my mother right now. "Why in the world wouldn’t they leave us alone.” No one seemed to hear what his mind was echoing.
He walked out.
(13)
They decided he was too young to take part in the ritual washing of his father’s body. It was his cousins and his uncles, but not him. But he wanted to. No one cared, no one asked. He sat alone in a corner, waiting for the ritual to be over and the body to be brought out. There it was, finally, and his dad seemed so peaceful, as if sleeping. He stepped forward, wishing to kiss his father.
Just as he bent down, he heard a loud, stern voice. “What are you doing?”
He turned back. There was one of his relatives. “I… I…” He didn’t know what to say. “Don’t touch him. He is clean and pure now. Don’t touch him.” The relative moved forward and covered his father’s face with the white sheet.
This would be the last memory he would have of his father, and this would be the start of a desire his lips have felt ever since.
(14)
Late that night, he finally found the chance to get his mother to a room alone with him. He so wanted to cry, so wanted to hug her, and so wanted to just let go of all that he had been storing. As he sat down next to her and hugged her, he heard a sob, and then another, the sobs increasing in their intensity. His mother was crying out loudly, and he was just not sure what to do. His tears had just started to trickle, but suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. He hugged his mother tightly, forgetting that he had anything of his own to say.
His forgetfulness would stay on for life.
(15)
Burying a loved one is hard. But letting go of that loved one is harder.
As they all got ready to lift his mother’s body, he just possessed by a desperate urge to defy the inevitable.
“Where are you taking her? You cannot do that. She cannot be dead. She was the only one left.” He was hysterical.
People tried to control him, but he had a raw energy of emotions stuck in time for years. In a frenzied state, he ran to the door and bolted it. “You cannot take her away.” There was no way he was letting her go!
And then he collapsed under the crushing weight of reality.
(16)
He stepped into the emptiness of his apartment, walking the familiar corridors and the same room where his father had spent his last night and his mother had spent countless sleepless nights for years. Years, months, days, moments, all measures of time had passed, and yet it was all as if yesterday.
Burial is hard, but it’s a closure. A closure that he waited for five years.
And yet, it was as elusive yesterday when he buried his mother, as it was years ago. The desire on his lips was as strong as it was years ago. He walked onto the adjoining balcony and looked at the stars, the winter wind still blowing silently. The ghosts of nights to come and nights that had gone past were all taking a dance. But he was still strong. More out of habit than out of the need that arose several years ago.
His lips were tingled with a desire he knew only too well- a thirst that will never be quenched. He took out a cigarette, lit it up, and took a deep smoke, feeling the smoke slightly burning his lips. Closing his eyes, he let himself slip into oblivion. It was time to quit the façade.
The cigarette in his hand continued to burn.
There is no end, it's always a new beginning.
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