Till death do us
part
I watched as she drew in her last
few breaths, a palpable joy coming over her face as if she knew what awaited
her if she had not popped the pill. A smirk grew across her face as if to
suggest, I go on my own terms, I have cheated death, and I have chosen my time-
so long till we meet again.
For us gathered around her
bedside it was like having to watch someone die the way we have never seen in
our lifetime. All the deaths that we encountered or heard about, our relatives,
parents, friends and neighbours have all been while we were not looking. Most
of them went in their sleep; others in hospital, still others were long dead
with only the formalities to be completed.
This was the first time I was
staring at death on the face, the first time I was seeing someone draw heavily
on the last available resources that her body would allow her to. In fact this
was the first time I was looking at death face to face albeit on the face of a loved
one. The pain that I went through and the emotions that drained out of me
during those final moments were incredibly tough, hard to explain. I wanted for
a moment to force her jaw open and dig the pill out. Yes, we had talked this
over many times and we had agreed on the timing, but the person fading away was
my dearly beloved wife.
It all started a few years into
our marriage, when she had a splitting headache, which we concluded to be
associated with some form of treatable migraine or the like. This increased
over a period of time till we were forced to take it seriously and consult a
doctor. The reports were startling since we had to prepare for a surgery to
remove a tumour. We went through it all and seemed on the road to recovery,
when it recurred and this time the doctors concluded that the second coming was
even worse and non-treatable giving my wife at best 10 years to live.
We went to the best of hospitals
the shrewdest medical brains in the country but the ailment grew worse, so much
so, that the disease seemed to manifest at a faster rate and the doctors
rewrote their findings to now declare that she only had a few more months to
live. How dreadful were those words, those findings, those conclusions. We hoped
and prayed it would go away, a miracle would take place, but the body kept
reminding my wife on a daily basis the nearing of the end.
Doctors had also described in
detail the pain and suffering that would precede the end and it seemed so
hopeless. Why undergo this pain and suffering when it was clear that the end
couldn’t be averted? This pain was not only to the patient but to all those who
loved her, to each member of the family, her dear friends. The purpose of pain
and suffering would be justified if there was some sort of succour in the end.
She would have gladly embraced it if there was a way out in the end, at least a
distorted outcome with life hanging in the balance would have had us think
another time.
But when all hopes are dashed and
there was helplessness on the medical front and with the doctors treating her,
what should she battle for? Why should she endear known hardships? Why get into
that territory when you couldn’t find your way ultimately? Therefore she
decided that it was not worth fighting, taking on the pain and suffering and
make others suffer when there was not a glimmer of hope, when even miracles
seemed to shamefully bow their head, when prayers wouldn’t add to the hope.
Now the only thing that remained
was when and how the ending should be. She decided that she would immediately
take up pending things she so wanted to do, things that were on the back burner
due to the constant visits to the doctor taking its toll. There was no point
visiting hospitals and doctors when the outcome was known, instead utilise the
available time and energy to live life to the extent possible befitting her age
and aspirations, remember she was only 29 years old. It was better to utilise
the residual strength in the body to achieve the things she wanted to do rather
than waste it on tiring efforts that were meaningless.
So the day we chose was the 3rd
of November 2014, a lovely day when heavens doors would be open, when the path
to heaven would be clearly visible from down under, when the birds would be at
their chirping best, when she could feel the breeze coming in through the open
windows and the sound of the leaves rustling, when the reality would sink into
her loved ones, when the awareness issues she hoped to create in the country
and through the various mediums would be somewhat brought into the limelight.
We all held hands and prayed as a
family when the soul was departing from her body, never holding her hands as
she stumbled into the darkest depths of another world lest it be construed as our
reluctance to let her go, because there was no going back, no coming again, for
somewhere in the distance I heard the voice of my dearly beloved wife lovingly
whisper into my ears, into our ears, into the ears of all her beloved faintly,
seemingly fading but unmistakable- I have challenged conventions, my job is
done keep fighting my lovely, my friends till we meet again.
4th November 2014
(This is an imaginary piece of writing nothing
to do with actual events of the death of Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill
woman who chose to end her life battling an untreatable cancerous head tumour
for which she even chose to migrate from her home in USA, San Francisco Bay
area to Oregon to get onto the right side of the law)
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