Sunday, May 13, 2018

Blood

My aunt sprained her foot this evening. That left me to wipe the kitchen floor after dinner, the first time I've been alone in that kitchen since the night after my mother's death on that same floor.
If you look closely on the tile under the fixed cupboard, you can still see remnants of my mother's blood, the dried stains we were unable to reach to mop up. 
Today, while I was wiping the kitchen floor, I remembered my mother in law. She helped me clean my mother's blood after we returned from the hospital. She and I scraped the pulpy mess out, sprinkled water on the dried clots, mopped up the seeping blood and carefully poured out buckets and buckets of reddened water from the moppings into the toilet so that the bathrooms would not become stained with the discards.
No matter how much my mother in law and I might argue, I will never forget how she helped me that night, quietly, sincerely and compassionately. She wept for my mother as she cleaned and although my eyes remained dry, I took comfort in her tears. 

Many hours later, my cousin and I wiped the floor again with soap and water to remove the stickiness of the blood and the stench of it. She sprayed insect repellent by the foot of the cupboard to stop ants from eating the blood. 

Today, wiping down the floor again, I saw the stubborn stains of dried blood hiding under the immovable cupboard and I recalled my mother in law and my cousin. Somehow, I am not as worried about ants eating up mom's blood. Let them. May they gain some succor from it. 

As for my mom, she truly did give her tears, sweat and blood to that kitchen. 

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Life and Death

We only ever hear of medical miracles- the time a child drowned for hours was somehow revived, the time a man had massive pulmonary embolisms that blocked off both sides of her lungs but yet survived and thrived, the time a man was revived despite his heart having stopped for a whole hour, all the "almost-died but didn't", the "lucky to be alive" stories that populate pretty much every form of modern communication known.

Death is supposed to be determined by the lack of a pulse, but somehow that didn't stop these people from not dying.

When are you supposed to stop trying to for a medical miracle and when are you supposed to keep trying? And how do you know the outcome will always be the positive one that they show you on TV? What if you do all this work, revive a once-dead person only to have a damaged person on your hands?

I wonder if I gave up too soon on my parents.

Logically, I think I took the right steps: assume we had succeeded in reviving my father.... then what? He still had the cancer, the inability to breathe by himself, the mouth ulcers that made it difficult for him to swallow and so on. Or if we had revived my mother and then she ended up like a vegetable, bedridden for life, dependent on someone else for every single action. Neither of them would have wanted that, I think.

Yet, the part of me that weaves fantasies wonders if I should have fought harder for a medical miracle.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

If mom had lived

A freak accident, a fall, and a bloody death.
 I looked at her body in the ICU, words forming accusingly in my head, fighting to keep from uttering them out aloud, "What the hell mom? What the fuck were you thinking to do?"
 And i imagined my mom's words, the cadence of it, the bewilderment and shock in her voice as she might have spoken had she been able to speak.
"I thought I would quickly just do that one thing, Varsha. I never expected...I never thought that's what would happen. The last thing I ever wanted was Ani to find me like that, that poor poor child"

That godawful blood. That stench of dried metallic fluid and gunk.

My mother was with me and she wasn't with me yesterday. She kept popping into my head to tell me things, that she hasn't meant to die, only to clean up the kitchen a bit, that she didn't want any of the fuss, she called me to cover her legs after they cleaned up her bloody clothes but hadn't thought to preserve that bit of modesty. She rested in the ICU only to wake up in my head again as we went to the police station to complete the medico legal formalities, regretting the trouble her decision to climb that ladder had caused. "I'm so sorry ma" said her voice. "Who would have thought I could do this or that it would come to this?" She bemoaned the delay in getting her body out of the hospital "Yeddukki, yenna ippidieyelan paduthura?"

The post mortem. My understanding of how she might have died improves. Her voice quiets as many many pieces of information are given: supra something something fissure, midline shift, massive cerebral hemorrhage on the right side, multiple fractures on the left side.

"So, you are saying that somehow she fell off the ladder, and landed on her left side, her right side of the brain started hemorrhaging and she lost blood and she died?" I ask the forensic doctor.
"The impact was massive", says the doctor gently. Massive, massive, says my head and her voice.

I latch on to something tightly. So she may have become unconscious? She may not have even known? RK clasps my hand to him and says, yes. She was unconscious when Ani found her a few seconds after she fell. Her body probably would have shut down immediately. 

I feel a sigh going through me. I sit with her wrapped, plastic packed body in the ambulance. I make no move to touch her. I recall the feel of her soft familiar flesh and I recoil from imagining how hard it might be by now. She looks different, sort of like a nun or some saint with her head tightly wrapped. She looks molded, like a doll. When my father died, he was dressed in clothes that he liked, in a khadi kurta and loose pants. My mother got plastic and ropes. "Ayyo Varsha", says her voice, and I imagine her keeping a palm on her forehead and shaking her head at me. "What does it matter now?"

We come back home, they lift her body into an icebox and I can no longer touch her, even if I want to. Right by the icebox on a table is my father's photograph. I stare at his face wondering if there is some secret that he knows. Could my father perhaps be there with my mother? Perhaps they were right now arguing about it. My father might be saying, I thought you wanted to join me and my mother might say, yes, but not so fast and not so violently! 
Or maybe my father would say, why in the world did you come so fast? Surely you knew the kids need you. And my mother would say, yes. I know. I don't know why I came so fast either.
Or even worse... To my ever lasting shame, my father might say, I saw Varsha didn't turn up with you for my 45th day ceremony. Clearly she wasn't taking proper care of you. I didnt think you should hang around there moping about me anymore.

My eyes are sore, my head burns behind them. I have a choice- I can either continue to sit and stare ahead, and eventually collapse into sobs, tears and a migraine or I can push some food into me, get some rest and stay in control. I eat. My mother is no longer taking directly to me, but in echoes, from a not so distant past when she and I both decided to eat after my father's body was brought home from the hospital so that we could stay alert to do what had to be done.
I nap.

When I wake up, my mother's voice is silent. There is a finality in that icebox. I join my aunts in keeping the vigil through the night. Somehow I feel lighter at heart. Light enough that I'm able to greet all those who come, able to narrate her death story and talk and laugh loudly with my cousins both during the vigil and later after the cremation

Somehow it doesn't feel wrong. And right now, when my head is thick, all I can do is go by my feelings.