A year ago tomorrow Appa's birthday according to the Tamil calendar. Let's pretend this is 28 June 2008, evening.
I'm not sure how they have allowed my son - because children below 12 are not allowed in the hospital - but security is notoriously lax; on doctor's orders, I have smuggled in parathas and paneer and all kinds of home-made food for Appa for the last three days and no one has objected - but they have let him in during visiting hours, and when we leave, Nani, my son and I decide to stop over at Abids to buy Appa a walking stick for his birthday tomorrow.
Three days in hospital and I feel lightheaded. My days have been spent on the overstuffed sofa reading sci-fi/fantasy I would not otherwise have touched. Appa sleeps all the time. The room is always semi-dark but I cannot leave to read outside because he now needs help to walk to the bathroom. The tree outside the window makes me queasy because it feels like the building is swaying. Outside it must be nearly-monsoon.
I park in an inside lane because as usual there is no parking anywhere on the main road; though rumour has it that Abids is not as crowded as it used to be I see no evidence of a migration to malls in other places.
Appa needs a walking stick. Rationally, I know this. Buying him a walking stick is my son's idea but the thought makes me bitter. A practical, useful gift at this point sucks what little joy a celebration might have held. As well buy him a pillbox or a bed-tray (I have considered buying him these things).
Birthday gifts should be frivolous. They should demonstrate how little we care for the time we have because we have so much of it.
The walking sticks are upstairs. Lepakshi must think that only those who don't need them will buy them; why else would they make them so hard to get to? They are stuck in a bin at the end of an obstacle course. We pick each one out. They are all hideous but we detect even amidst this poor selection, ones that are worse than others: some are chipped, others are painted an ugly shit-brown. Finally we select one with a twirling body and a sturdy handle. As I pay for it (on behlaf of my son) I wonder how an already shaky man will be supported by this thin, crooked piece of wood.
Later we stop to buy him some track pants. These are another one of those things he needs urgently.
At night, Nani, with her failing eyes, gets things together for the akkaravadusal she will make for Appa tomorrow, that I will smuggle into the room and which he will at first refuse but when the doctors come to wish him, cheery and loud, asking him how he plans to celebrate and urging him to eat whatever he likes that day, he will manage one spoon of before he sets down the half-katori to go to the bathroom.
I lie in bed telling myself that if he makes it past his real birthday, I will think of a good gift for him. Until then, in whoseever's dispensation such things are, his life is a sufficient gift for me.
But it's not my birthday we're talking about here, is it?
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A month of years
What was I thinking a year ago? What did I mean by 'in good time' when it was clear that nothing about the present time was good? Was I waiting for the wheel to turn and for what passes for 'good' to return? Would I recognise it when I saw it? (and did I, in August?)
In other words, why this blog?
I stopped posting on Spaniard shortly before I began this and then I stayed silent for a few weeks until everything was over. When I did start to post here, this blog was open. After all, if I was going to air the most painful thoughts on a blog at all, it ought, by rights, be available to everyone: the more people there are the more anonymous you become.
In time that did not feel right any more. And so I restricted readers to a couple of dozen, some of whom I still had never met except online. Was that more right? Are there degrees of rightness with the opening of wounds in public?
Now there are six of you. For all practical purposes, we might be a bunch of people at a coffee shop or - God forbid! - at an AA meeting, swapping therapeutic stories. I'm Space Bar and it's been five weeks since my last sob story.
This was meant to be therapy, wasn't it? A place where I could say things I might not even have allowed myself to say in front of my own family, fresh with their own grief. A place where the sum of all your other experiences would help to drain away the charge of my excess. This was the hole in the wall where I could whisper my unspeakable secrets and no one would know though everyone was watching.
Then, when it became more particular, in the days when you had faces, I lost my voice. Why? Why did I allow you your separateness and me my silence? What were we doing still sitting around this cold hearth?
What am I doing now, already looking back on the not-yet-a-year as if it had the didactic weight of a lifetime? What am I meant to learn?
A year ago, when I wrote that first post, I didn't know that I would wake up the next day to find my father crying with exhaustion, his eyes too dry to make tears. I didn't know that I would begin to take decisions on his behalf and take him to the hospital despite his wishes. I also didn't think they would keep him, that I would break my promise to him that this would only be a consultation and not admission.
I didn't know any of it but I knew why I needed this space.
In other words, why this blog?
I stopped posting on Spaniard shortly before I began this and then I stayed silent for a few weeks until everything was over. When I did start to post here, this blog was open. After all, if I was going to air the most painful thoughts on a blog at all, it ought, by rights, be available to everyone: the more people there are the more anonymous you become.
In time that did not feel right any more. And so I restricted readers to a couple of dozen, some of whom I still had never met except online. Was that more right? Are there degrees of rightness with the opening of wounds in public?
Now there are six of you. For all practical purposes, we might be a bunch of people at a coffee shop or - God forbid! - at an AA meeting, swapping therapeutic stories. I'm Space Bar and it's been five weeks since my last sob story.
This was meant to be therapy, wasn't it? A place where I could say things I might not even have allowed myself to say in front of my own family, fresh with their own grief. A place where the sum of all your other experiences would help to drain away the charge of my excess. This was the hole in the wall where I could whisper my unspeakable secrets and no one would know though everyone was watching.
Then, when it became more particular, in the days when you had faces, I lost my voice. Why? Why did I allow you your separateness and me my silence? What were we doing still sitting around this cold hearth?
What am I doing now, already looking back on the not-yet-a-year as if it had the didactic weight of a lifetime? What am I meant to learn?
A year ago, when I wrote that first post, I didn't know that I would wake up the next day to find my father crying with exhaustion, his eyes too dry to make tears. I didn't know that I would begin to take decisions on his behalf and take him to the hospital despite his wishes. I also didn't think they would keep him, that I would break my promise to him that this would only be a consultation and not admission.
I didn't know any of it but I knew why I needed this space.
Monday, June 22, 2009
(interval: part 2)
My grandmother is visiting. This time it will be different. For one thing, she is one year older, more frail and for the first time probably the one in need of looking after. She has been suffering from vertigo and it doesn't seem possible that her trip alone by train can be incident-free though we will be thankful if it is.
It is. She has avoided eating or drinking and therefore the need to go to the bathroom. She is not noticeably less able than last year but that is probably a lifetime of taking her energy for granted. I have never seen my grandmother ill.
Amma says different. She has recently talked about Nani's nervous breakdown back when Amma was in her teens. She can't remember much about it. Only that Nani used to shiver in the Mettur night and need blankets. Everything else about this time is a blur in Amma's mind, either because she was in college at the time or because she has the blessed ability to foget many, many things. At any rate, it seems to have followed a time when my mama - my mother's brother - was il with several dificult diseases and needed constant nursing. Nani must have been a taut string stretched beyond bearing at the time. I want to know what her 'breakdown' amounted to, beyond the shivering and the blankets.
Should I ask? I want to know, not out of some vulgar curiosity - well, not entirely - but because this is probably the last time she will make the trip to Hyderabad. She is 84. How many things will go unsaid and unremembered when she does? How much can I ask and how much does she want aired at this point in her life?
And what would be the point?
But I want to know what a woman roughly the age I am now, felt after severe stress. What was it like then, when people in general and women in particular did not acknowledge that the mind could only take so much? How did this entity we can find no place for in the body but which cannot exist without it - how was this thing healed and how did people know it was sick?
*
Yesterday at the station, Amma was restless, waiting for the train to arrive. Though the display told us what platform and what time, she still prowled and looked for someone who would tell her with some more authority, the trains' coordinates.
Later, she moved downstairs for the next few weeks and I could hear them talk - mother and daughter - far into the night. Lying there, listening to the murmur of voices coming through my windown, I was conscious of feeling a little desolate though I couldnt say why.
It is. She has avoided eating or drinking and therefore the need to go to the bathroom. She is not noticeably less able than last year but that is probably a lifetime of taking her energy for granted. I have never seen my grandmother ill.
Amma says different. She has recently talked about Nani's nervous breakdown back when Amma was in her teens. She can't remember much about it. Only that Nani used to shiver in the Mettur night and need blankets. Everything else about this time is a blur in Amma's mind, either because she was in college at the time or because she has the blessed ability to foget many, many things. At any rate, it seems to have followed a time when my mama - my mother's brother - was il with several dificult diseases and needed constant nursing. Nani must have been a taut string stretched beyond bearing at the time. I want to know what her 'breakdown' amounted to, beyond the shivering and the blankets.
Should I ask? I want to know, not out of some vulgar curiosity - well, not entirely - but because this is probably the last time she will make the trip to Hyderabad. She is 84. How many things will go unsaid and unremembered when she does? How much can I ask and how much does she want aired at this point in her life?
And what would be the point?
But I want to know what a woman roughly the age I am now, felt after severe stress. What was it like then, when people in general and women in particular did not acknowledge that the mind could only take so much? How did this entity we can find no place for in the body but which cannot exist without it - how was this thing healed and how did people know it was sick?
*
Yesterday at the station, Amma was restless, waiting for the train to arrive. Though the display told us what platform and what time, she still prowled and looked for someone who would tell her with some more authority, the trains' coordinates.
Later, she moved downstairs for the next few weeks and I could hear them talk - mother and daughter - far into the night. Lying there, listening to the murmur of voices coming through my windown, I was conscious of feeling a little desolate though I couldnt say why.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Home Stretch [A Year Ago]
Last year, today, also the first day of school. That time a Monday, this time a Tuesday. S and I leave early so we can leave some mangoes with security for the doctors before school. I don't go up to see Appa because of S, who is not allowed to visit.
Once I've seen the kid into class and paid the fees, I come back to the hospital to wait for Dr. K who will discharge him today. Appa is supposed to have oxygen arranged at home before he's allowed to leave but he leaves by car, with no oxygen until he's home. The doctors have discussed this and Appa feels he can make it without.
I stay behind to settle bills. Do I go back to school to pick up S and the books? Did he come back home by bus? With the books? Appa covers some of them until he tires. Those covers are the only ones that survive the year intact. All other covers come off in a couple of months.
Earlier.
Six days in hospital. Appa waited for S's birthday before getting tests. On the day he went to see the doctor - for once with Amma, because she wants to see him - the doctor tells them he needs to be admitted immediately. Later, I see in his file that Dr. K has written: Breathless. Cannot even complete one sentence.
Amma stays on. I call everyone. Two of my uncles arrange to leave immediately, one of them with my grandmother and her younger sister.
My prayers are fervent and continuous. This was not expected. Later that night, after S is asleep, I scribble on my post-it and get online to look for crematoria and mortuary numbers. Why mortuary? Who lived so far away we would have to wait for them? Everyone was coming anyway, right now.
The next morning in the hospital, Appa is cheerful as only great adversity can make him. "Whatever happens we will face it," he says. I have heard and will continue to hear this many times in the days to come. I'm not sure how it makes me feel.
He has to have something called a guided aspiration. There's some fluid in his pleural cavity (cavity? is that right?). There will be a local anaesthesia given. While he prepares for it, Amma leaves for home. I'm told Dr. K wants to meet me and I should go see him whenever I come in.
He is with a patient but he nods and says to please wait for a few minutes. When he's ready, I sit.
"It doesn't look good," he says. "His lungs are in a very bad shape."
I reply with a variation of Appa's whatever it is we will face line. "You can tell me the worst, doctor. We're prepared for anything."
He wasn't prepared to hear that, however. Doctors want hope to spring eternal. He says we need to wait to see how the U/S guided aspiration goes.
In the days to come, the doctor notches up his cheeriness as Appa finds the pain unbearable. Eat more! You're looking good! How are you, sir?
I massage Appa's shoulders which hurt him all the time. The doctor on rounds says I shouldn't because of possible haematoma. We have to consider his liver condition as well. The balance is precarious. I try to be cheerful but find it harder each day. There's a second-hand bookshop down the road. I walk down one evening I'm in hospital and find a Le Carre, and something else I can't remember. I have the library's David Sedaris. How unrelated all writing is.
People come to see Appa. There are relatives at home. I remember nothing of their presence. There's the early morning trip to the hospital, the parking lot attendants, the security, the nurses - I know them all by name now.
Nurses. That head nurse who did not come even when Dr. K rang for her. He yelled at her, she was defiant but later apologetic. But they were all lackadaisical. Wrong dosages, wrong inhalers. Not even Amma knows what has to be given when. I have to keep an eagle eye on them because Appa is not always able to speak.
This is my preparation: this daily knowledge of decline in ability. In this I am better prepared than Amma. It wasn't prescience that made me look for the crematorium numbers; just preparedness.
If Appa had known, he would have been proud.
Once I've seen the kid into class and paid the fees, I come back to the hospital to wait for Dr. K who will discharge him today. Appa is supposed to have oxygen arranged at home before he's allowed to leave but he leaves by car, with no oxygen until he's home. The doctors have discussed this and Appa feels he can make it without.
I stay behind to settle bills. Do I go back to school to pick up S and the books? Did he come back home by bus? With the books? Appa covers some of them until he tires. Those covers are the only ones that survive the year intact. All other covers come off in a couple of months.
Earlier.
Six days in hospital. Appa waited for S's birthday before getting tests. On the day he went to see the doctor - for once with Amma, because she wants to see him - the doctor tells them he needs to be admitted immediately. Later, I see in his file that Dr. K has written: Breathless. Cannot even complete one sentence.
Amma stays on. I call everyone. Two of my uncles arrange to leave immediately, one of them with my grandmother and her younger sister.
My prayers are fervent and continuous. This was not expected. Later that night, after S is asleep, I scribble on my post-it and get online to look for crematoria and mortuary numbers. Why mortuary? Who lived so far away we would have to wait for them? Everyone was coming anyway, right now.
The next morning in the hospital, Appa is cheerful as only great adversity can make him. "Whatever happens we will face it," he says. I have heard and will continue to hear this many times in the days to come. I'm not sure how it makes me feel.
He has to have something called a guided aspiration. There's some fluid in his pleural cavity (cavity? is that right?). There will be a local anaesthesia given. While he prepares for it, Amma leaves for home. I'm told Dr. K wants to meet me and I should go see him whenever I come in.
He is with a patient but he nods and says to please wait for a few minutes. When he's ready, I sit.
"It doesn't look good," he says. "His lungs are in a very bad shape."
I reply with a variation of Appa's whatever it is we will face line. "You can tell me the worst, doctor. We're prepared for anything."
He wasn't prepared to hear that, however. Doctors want hope to spring eternal. He says we need to wait to see how the U/S guided aspiration goes.
In the days to come, the doctor notches up his cheeriness as Appa finds the pain unbearable. Eat more! You're looking good! How are you, sir?
I massage Appa's shoulders which hurt him all the time. The doctor on rounds says I shouldn't because of possible haematoma. We have to consider his liver condition as well. The balance is precarious. I try to be cheerful but find it harder each day. There's a second-hand bookshop down the road. I walk down one evening I'm in hospital and find a Le Carre, and something else I can't remember. I have the library's David Sedaris. How unrelated all writing is.
People come to see Appa. There are relatives at home. I remember nothing of their presence. There's the early morning trip to the hospital, the parking lot attendants, the security, the nurses - I know them all by name now.
Nurses. That head nurse who did not come even when Dr. K rang for her. He yelled at her, she was defiant but later apologetic. But they were all lackadaisical. Wrong dosages, wrong inhalers. Not even Amma knows what has to be given when. I have to keep an eagle eye on them because Appa is not always able to speak.
This is my preparation: this daily knowledge of decline in ability. In this I am better prepared than Amma. It wasn't prescience that made me look for the crematorium numbers; just preparedness.
If Appa had known, he would have been proud.
Monday, June 8, 2009
(interval: part 1)
Why is it harder than I thought? It's not what it looks like.
I feel at peace.
Reasonably happy.
I look forward to the day and the people it will bring.
This means I find it hard to remember.
(There are days when remembering is not a choice I have to make: such as when it was S's birthday and I thought of last year when we took the last photographs of Appa. Later that evening, when S, his father and I drove back my car from the service station, I cried all the way back because this was what Appa used to do with me - bring his car so I didn't have to take an auto or walk, wait until I got my car and drive back behind me.)
How does it matter? Forgetting is good, right? If the details are getting blurred it means that time is doing its famous healing job (why does time not heal the old when they are still alive?) and I have nothing to do but wait.
I don't see it like that. I see this one year as the last time it will ever be the first time without Appa. Once we've crossed this line, what else is there but repetition and the boredom of it? If there is an edge left, it is now and if I don't keep it next to my skin I must be doing Appa a disservice.
I feel pulled apart in several different directions. There's no time left. At least, not much of it.
I feel at peace.
Reasonably happy.
I look forward to the day and the people it will bring.
This means I find it hard to remember.
(There are days when remembering is not a choice I have to make: such as when it was S's birthday and I thought of last year when we took the last photographs of Appa. Later that evening, when S, his father and I drove back my car from the service station, I cried all the way back because this was what Appa used to do with me - bring his car so I didn't have to take an auto or walk, wait until I got my car and drive back behind me.)
How does it matter? Forgetting is good, right? If the details are getting blurred it means that time is doing its famous healing job (why does time not heal the old when they are still alive?) and I have nothing to do but wait.
I don't see it like that. I see this one year as the last time it will ever be the first time without Appa. Once we've crossed this line, what else is there but repetition and the boredom of it? If there is an edge left, it is now and if I don't keep it next to my skin I must be doing Appa a disservice.
I feel pulled apart in several different directions. There's no time left. At least, not much of it.
Friday, June 5, 2009
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