My mother lost me a year ago. Some people say that I lost
her. But the fact is I can't see her anymore. There's a myth that she can see
me. I hope she does. I don't know where do people go when they leave us, their
body. I am still thinking, looking, wondering.
Everyone knows, inside, that this is going to happen one
day. But when it actually does, very few have the courage to accept it. I
realised a year ago that I was not one of those. A day before she actually left
was the day when I came to know that she was not going to be from the next day.
Doctors told me that. I cried. I felt that something was going to happen to me.
I didn't know then that my roots would be cropped out.
The day when she was separated from the ventilator, I was
doing the formalities at the hospital. The doctors allowed me to go see her in
the ICU. There was no ventilator. Her palms were tied into a fist so that she
couldn't take the ventilator out.
I remembered two nights before when the doctor showed up in
the midnight and decided to put her onto a ventilator. I remember the urge in
her eyes. She never wanted to spend the last days of this life in the company
of high tech medical equipment and smelling the medicines. She always wanted to
bypass that process where a machine pumps in breath into your lungs. But the
ones those are not on the bed, could never decide what's the best for them. The
moment your close ones become a patient, you start taking decisions for them. I
too took that decision when the doctors got my signature. It was necessary. I,
as a son, couldn't refuse an instrument that could help me see my mother
breathing. I didn't know then that she still was my mother and not a mere
patient. How could I refuse her wish?
That one moment took me each of those moments when she expressed
her wish of staying away from ventilator. She didn't open her eyes. She didn't
even know that I was standing next to her. She didn't know that she was losing
me. It was only last day when I fed her with my own hands. Her hands were
punctured and occupied by numerous pipes and syringes. She needed my support to
put food in her mouth. I remembered that, when I was standing next to her while
she was still my mother and not a body, because that were the last morsels
she'd had. She was counting her breaths. I was losing her.
I was not able to think anything but helplessness. My mother
was preparing for her journey out of her body. That was one moment when I
realised something really strange. She brought me into this world and that was
the moment she lost herself. She became a mother, my mother. All she was
thinking was about me and my well being. It was her who put the first morsel of
food in my mouth. Life came to a strange full circle. I fed her with the last
morsel of her life.
That was the time when those knew her, started showing up.
Only my friends knew her through me. Rest of them were my close relatives. She
was the reason they knew me. That very reason was going to be extinct. What's a
man's life without a reason? As time passed, doctors kept informing about the
progress. Unfortunately, the progress was taking her to her demise. I don't remember
what exactly my state of mind was. It must be grief and sorrow. It may be about
facing the fact that she was not going to see me off while leaving for work or
my mobile phone was not going to flash 'Aai' (mother) the name I had stored her
number in. Even though it would, by chance, my ears were never going to be
filled by her voice calling my name.
I wish she could see me one day through her eyes donated to
someone unknown. I envy that person who has those loving and kind eyes. They
are the eyes that always looked at me with immense love. She wanted them to be
filled with pride for me. I hope one day they will.
One year has passed by. I have started sitting in her chair
at the dining table. Even now, I leave home by saying good bye to her picture.
I have always thought that she smiles at me through that picture. Nobody knows
where does that spirit go or what a soul becomes when it leaves one body. Those
who knew her would tell about her kind and pure heart. She was a great soul
which might be gifted with another human body. I wish she gets. But I know that
god, if he exists and knows everything about mankind, must have only one job
for her in whichever form her soul wears. She's always going to be a mother of
someone. That's the job she knows the best, loving her child unconditionally.
