“I think it’s time for you to come back now”.
I am on an international call to India with Ana who is out there with the kids for the last month. She is staying with my mom helping her with Dad’s illness. We have discussed this before she left that she would let me know when things get really bad.
The irony that I am going back to visit him when he is no longer in a condition to talk anymore is lost upon me at that time. It’s 11.30 in the morning, sitting in the office listening to her say it, while people normally walk around.
I want to take the next flight out.
After booking the flight later for that night and sending a quick note to Dean that I wanted to talk, I head to his office. Dean is the senior vice president overlooking the entire operations with almost 140 people reporting up to him. His secretary ushers me in with a look that I know well. I probably have less than 10 minutes.
I sit in his office and wonder how I should start. He takes one look at me, gets up, and closes the door.
“I need to leave tonight. Dad’s not doing well”
It’s a statement. Not a request. He knows this. We have talked a bit about this before and he knows the lengths I would go if it comes to that. Yet, I run their ACH and wire transfer operations and it’s a bad sell for him.
“Any idea when you can get back?”, he asks looking down at the daily transfer status report.
I shrug. At this point, I am not looking beyond one day. There are many things running through my head. None of them pertain remotely to work or coming back.
“Ok. Do what you need to do. Just leave me your cell number where I can reach you.”
“I don’t have one. Never needed it “.
He looks at me for a second, then scowls and nods. He calls someone, barks out some orders, and turns back to me.
“Pick one up at the desk in an hour. It will cover the international calls”.
I thank him and start to walk outside. There are things to be wrapped up. I’ll probably have an hour to pack up after I am done.
As I open the door, he is already reading some papers. He suddenly lifts his head up, comes around the desk, and extends a handout.
“Jake will pick you up at 8.00 and take you to the airport”, he says, and then softly adds almost to himself, “It’s never easy”.
As I sit back in the car watching the traffic, I have mixed feelings. It feels like the last four years have taken their toll, not just on me but the entire family. I remember it was 2003, almost four years ago when he fell down on his way to the fire temple where he worked every morning from 5 am. He came back home dazed and confused and the family attributed to him being hurt but when he continued to sleep for extended periods over the next few days, they took him in for a routine checkup.
Both of his kidneys were down to 10% and routine dialysis was the only alternative. Dialysis in India is not a cheap affair and the thrice a week session along with consulting fees, medications, and monthly hospitalizations quickly added up.
The fact that I would want to take care of him and be by his side in India is precluded by the fact that I have to earn faster than the expense rate was an irony of fate. We don’t always get what we wish for.
The Delta flight touches down in Bombay at 1.20 AM. It’s pouring at a steady clip. Bombay is quiet at this time, the twilight hour when things are slowly winding down but not before the newspaper sorters and the milkmen start their daily routine.
There are tired bodies sleeping on the pavements, covered by thin sheets of cloth, their only protection against the elements. The cab races through and the distance that usually takes more than an hour is covered in less than 20 minutes. I get down and pay the driver and there is a feeling of dread.
The brain gives us two ways to evaluate our experiences — there is how we apprehend such an experience at the moment and how we look at them afterward — and these two ways deeply contradictory. I am still in the moment as I take the elevator to the third floor, the sound of the elevator awakening Ana as she opens the door to the apartment.
I peek in and see him lying down on the cold marble floor on his side and I look at Ana questioningly. She tells me that he was fine when he could walk with assistance as he had come from the bedroom to the hall in the evening but then could not go back. The women of the house could not carry him back in and so he was asleep there on the cold marble floor. A wave of guilt washes over me as I gently pick him up and slowly carry him back to the bedroom. He wakes up and looks at me but I am not sure if he recognizes me. I lay him on the bed and cover him in a blanket. He is still shivering slightly.
“Dad, it’s me….”, I manage to say as I stroke his head gently.
The thinning hairs on his head that are usually neatly parted are now just disheveled. I try to fix them but then just give up. I sleep on a thin sheet on the floor right beside his bed waking up every hour to look at him. I still haven’t got used to this. Ana, my sister, and my mom seem to have taken this in stride.
I am supposed to be the stronger one, the man of the house, the backbone that keeps this going, and yet here I am — Dazed, worried, and almost dysfunctional.
The next couple of days are no better. He does not wake up the next morning and we transfer him to the local hospital for dialysis. The doctor recommends a spinal tap as they suspect an infection of the brain fluid. I stand outside as they bring in the curtains and cover his bed from all sides. A flurry of people moves in and out as I sit watching them come and go.
I suddenly hear a loud moan and recognize his voice. This is the first time I have heard his voice since I have been here and it’s heartbreaking. I have seen spinal taps before and how painful they can be. I cannot imagine what he is going through. I quietly step outside. I am putting a distance between myself and his pain — The coward that I am.
A couple of hours later the family doctor calls me in for a quick consultation. They are planning to put him on a 24-hour dialysis routine and possibly a pre-op procedure to determine the root cause. I ask her what the prognosis looks like and she shrugs her shoulders.
“It might be some days or it might be for some months. I just can’t tell”, she says with ambivalence.
I talk to my mother and then head back in.
“We would like to take him home”. I have made my decision. The spinal tap had finally capped it for me. If he was going to go, at least he would go in peace.
“You can’t do that. We could try many other things and one of them might work”, she says. I doubt she can even convince herself.
“If you do that, he won’t have more than 10 days as the urea poisons the bloodstream. There is no kidney function at all”, she looks at me incredulously. I shake my head. No words are spoken. I have already made my decision.
As a person’s end draws near, there comes a moment when the responsibility shifts to someone else to decide what to do next and it’s one of the most heartbreaking decisions for a son to decide that this is where it stops. But the arrow of events refuses to follow a steady course and that plays havoc on one’s mind.
Only the day before, it seemed like he might have weeks, even months. I didn’t want my mother or my younger sister to be making this decision. The parent who sustained you for all your life, who is the reason for your very existence, and whose life or death is now being decided by the very same child. I dread that the decision will haunt me for the rest of my life but instead there is a sense of peace, and acceptance of the inevitable hand of nature.
The ambulance van threads through the evening rush hour traffic as I sit next to him holding his hand looking outside the window at the rain-drenched people trying to get home.
On the third day, he suddenly opens his eyes. I have barely woken up and see him looking around.
“When did you come back? Don’t you have to work?”, he asks looking at me.
“He’s awake!” my mom shouts out as Ana and the girls come running into the room. He’d recognized her.
“My little Baku”, he smiles at the three-year-old as she pulls herself up next to the bed, looks at him, and smiles her toothy smile.
I sponge him down, brush his teeth, and even asks for his cup of tea which Ana brings to him. A small cup, just enough. He doesn’t know what each cup of liquid means. That it would weigh on his heart, making it pump harder and harder, circulating the blood that’s quickly increasing in urea content.
I push those thoughts further away as I smile and make him sit in the wheelchair as I push it down to the hall where the neighbors are waiting to say hello.
Later in the evening when everyone is gone, he sits and watches a cricket match on TV.
“I barely made it this time”, he suddenly looks at me and smiles shaking his head. I don’t know what to tell him and an overwhelming sense of affection comes to me as I hold him close. He is sitting and I am standing, towering over him, the balance of power in a father-son relationship shifted. He hugs me back patting me on the back.
“I am really glad you came. You are a good son. I hope everyone gets a son like him”, he says that to my mother who has suddenly materialized and is standing next to him. For a minute everything is back to normal. Ana sitting on the floor smiling, the kids running around as he watches them smiling. For a minute, everything can wait while we let go of yesterday.
It’s almost ten days now. Medical science and nature have taken its toll and he has slipped back into a comatose state, his breathing getting more and more labored as the liquids circulate his body without any means of exit. His eyelids flutter at times and he opens his eyes and looks around, those big blank eyes searching for something, recognizing nothing.
For long hours in the night, I sleep on the floor beside his bed as he lays quiet and stock-still, except for the rattle of his breathing that permeates everything around him, the air, the sound, the silence of the night. There is a sharp intake of breath — it sounds like a snore that would shut off suddenly as if a lid had come down — followed a second later by a long exhale. Then there is silence for what seems forever and I count the seconds laying on my back before the cycle starts up again.
I clean him up in the morning slowly sponging him as has become my daily routine. I am tired, exhausted, and overwhelmed. He looks at me with those empty eyes and I want him to recognize me, to hug me one more time and to crack that smile of his just once but instead, he just looks around, the labored breathing the only sound that I hear, again and again, and again.
“I think you should just let it go now dad, just let it go”, I hold his shoulders tightly, too tightly as I shake him a little before telling him that.
Immediately as I do so I am overwhelmed with a seeping sense of shame. What did I just say? I just told him to die, to let it go so that I would stop suffering, stop watching him like this so that we could carry on with our lives, our normal lives.
He looks at me with those same eyes and I am ashamed that he has heard me, not just heard me but even comprehend what I had said and meant. Those words, uttered in desperation at that moment would stay with me for the rest of my life as I contemplate my ending someday and someone standing over me probably thinking if not uttering those same words. It’s a dark day for me and for what I have become.
Outside the balcony is an almond tree, which surprises me one morning with a bright red leaf among the broad green leaves; it has changed color overnight as if painted by a practical joker.
I leave for Pune the next day with Ana, an escapist’s routine that I have become so used to, away from this suffering if only for a day. My brother in law is getting engaged and we have asked them not to cancel the event. They are worried about what to do for all the right reasons so I want to go attend the function for a day.
It’s early morning the next day as I prepare to take the evening train when the phone rings. Ana picks up the phone, looks up at me, and puts it back.
“It happened at 9.30 AM. We should take the next bus”.
I look at her for a second and blink.
Inside its winter and outside… It’s spring.
