Demented Lamentations

Demented Lamentations

It is in reality the most sorrowful moment of my life as I sit watching someone who loved life and had a lot live for, moaning a prayer unto God that he lets the unthinkable happen. Yes we all wish that when it comes calling, it comes quickly and painlessly.

Though we all know that we are all mortal, deep within us we are unable to accept it. We, all of us believe in mortality of everyone else, except our own. We ever unknowingly consider our lives as everlasting. Partly because our concept of time is closely related to our affinity to life. And timelessness does not meet our understandings.

So imagine someone praying for that final closure of his or her eyelids, never to open again. The pain the prompts such a wish can scarce be imagine by anyone else. Unless they see the suffering with their own eyes and partake in it. I did. And the person suffering was none other than my mother. The pain and suffering she endures, I see with teary eyes, and feel a bit of the pain, as a separated living part of her own body.

Someone who lived on her own terms, with a zest for life, her liveliness may have been the envy of even someone half her age. In her late eighties, she had the bubbling energy of a forty year old in good health. She had very distinct likes and dislike. She knew what happened all around her and the world over. She suffered from no major illnesses. To those who caught her displeasure, she had a mouthful. Full of life. Until…..

She had a fall that broke her hip bone. She needed a surgery. This was done with no delay and it was a success. Her hip bone healed, but had gnawed into her reasoning and memory, inch by inch.

Slowly she went into the grips of dementia slowly losing reasoning and memory. She slipped in and out of real sense. Her entire body was now the living ground for all things bad. And in her mind she saw things unreal and wouldn’t even recognize her own children. My mother is today resident in the rehabilitation centre for dementia.

Watching her in the state she is now, I couldn’t help reflecting on the state of human life, when illnesses take over your life. All that you have gained, earned, grabbed and been gifted means nothing in this stage. Even for those you loved and cared for, in whose wet day you have shielded, who enjoyed from your largesse, you become a burden, too heavy to carry, a bother, not worth wasting even a moment for. Today you sit in a corner of a world that wants nothing to do with you.

And when such a time comes, there will be a few relatives who will creep out from the unseen corners. They have not come forth so far, never even lent her a hand when she need to be held, but have appeared with shameless and unreal sympathies. The centre that she is resident in is perhaps the best option for her. The owner of this institution, Dr Robert, himself has his mother resident there. Any other option would have been more hurting for her. Yet these creepy crawlies called relatives now blame us, her children, who are the only ones she has in reality.

True love is not delivered blabbering mouthfuls. It comes as deeds of love that ensures that your pains are assuaged, your eyes swabbed of the tears and your hand held when you need. All the pretended sympathies will not, feed you or take you to the toilet. In fact these blabbers only help drive those who care away.

Today I come home with a heavy heart, not because I was in the bad books of these pretenders, but because I have not been able to find a better way to lessen my mother’s suffering. Think as I did, the current option seems to be the very best option. Today what I saw may well be my fate tomorrow. The option that we, I and my siblings give her is the option, I would wish I be given in such a scenario, God Forbid, if it were to happen.

It is only her very own flesh that feel the pains. Not the do-gooders, critics and sympathizers. The pain we feel is real and come with us even when we are miles away or in the middle of something unrelated. The wish we have that she be back to normal comes from the very depth of our hearts, unlike the lip service they render. And the bleeding that happens in our heart sheds real blood unlike the cluck clucking of those with clobbered up love.

Today we all pray that she slowly come back to her normal self and give us the mouthfuls when she feels the need to give us. And bubbles up with the energy that we will envy. But most importantly we wish not to ever hear her own prayer for the unthinkable to happen