20 JULY 2010
(Extract from my diary)
Hope and faith both can create wonders… But what if one loses both of them… Eight months back I saw loss of hope and loss of faith… ‘Cancer’ is a word everyone knows is dreadful. I was of the same opinion but it was only after I saw my own discovering it in her, I saw the pain associated with it…
One morning my Nani came to my house, smiling and babbling as usual. She said she has to go to the doctor because her right arm was paining… everyone including her thought it was a minor problem. We laughed, talked and gossiped… the day passed just liked every other normal day.
Two days later her reports had a different story to tell… my uncle came home with the reports. He being a doctor took the words ‘Breast Cancer’ very bravely. For us it was new. We didn’t know how to handle it or rather handle my Nani. On this day we didn’t talk, didn’t laugh, didn’t gossip… the silence was killing… it was not a normal day… we decided not to tell her anything and start her treatment hoping that ignorance will act as bliss… but deep inside everyone knew that she was clever enough to find out what she cocooned within her… breast cancer is curable and so here arouse ‘hope’…Hope that she will be fine. Hope that the cancer is not malignant. Hope that the treatment goes well… and no one knew the uncertainty of this ‘hope’…
The surgery was done… her chemotherapy and radiation sittings started… Long back I heard someone say that its better to die than take chemotherapy and radiation… now I could see the verity of that statement…but my grandma took it as it came… she smiled through pain…she cooked food, she washed her clothes, she did all mundane work even when we didn’t allow her to do it… she made everything look normal and camouflaged all pain… at times when the pain crossed its limits she wept and wept like a child. At that time we hated our helplessness. But her ‘faith’ in herself and god kept her spirits high…
The treatment was over. We were happy that she fought it… but there was something else in her fate. It didn’t want her to win…slowly her hand started to swell…again we started approaching every doctor… now her hand was the size of an elephant foot and the pain an elephant size. She needed her other hand to support it… ‘her cancer has reoccurred’ that was what the doctors told us and we were told to wait for death and they took away all hope…she could no longer do her work. Neither eat nor bath. She was told by her own daughter that the end will come soon and she had to wait…they cried and cried like they never did…now she had no faith and no hope… I really don’t know how it feels when you know that you have a few days to live. But I guess it makes you feel worse when you really want to live, when you have dreams you want to fulfill but no time with you, when you have a strong penchant for life… and my grandma wanted to live which made things worse…it was very hard for her to accept…on 10th November 2009 she lost her speech… she was on high doses of pain killers…slowly she got hallucinations. She stopped recognizing people… and for the first time in my life I prayed for death to come because I didn’t want to see things get uglier and uglier… on 14th November she surrendered peacefully in her sleep… and everyone was thankful…
I still don’t know why such an ugly thing happened to such a beautiful lady… she was brave, tolerant and intelligent…she was dynamic in taking decisions, good at banking… a scintillating speaker ( I just loved to listen to her)…I always told her that she would have been an entrepreneur if educated… she was a perfect combination of an intelligent brain and a beautiful heart… we will always miss you… love you forever…
For my dear Nani, wherever you are.
