Death becomes her (and him)

 Death is the ultimate whitewash; making saints of ordinary men and women

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So William Shakespeare wrote about Julius Caeser, putting his words in Mark Antony’s mouth. But I can’t help but think that Shakespeare got it wrong this one time. The truth is that death is the ultimate whitewash, cleansing the deceased of all their sins and leaving behind a saintly figure that often bears no resemblance to the person they actually were while alive. 

The revisionism starts soon after death. All eulogies by family members and friends focus on the many virtues of the recently departed, some real but many imagined. Even the worst parent is recast a doting presence by bereaved children. The surviving spouse of the most fractious relationship will have you believe that their’s was the love story of the century. And so on. 

That’s not entirely surprising given that we are constantly being exhorted not to speak ill of the dead. If you have nothing nice to say, we are told if we are even mildly critical, then it’s better to say nothing at all. If you must speak then make sure that you are devotional rather than derogatory in tone. 

In time, this message becomes so internalised in us that we are programmed to look at the dead through rose-tinted glasses. The mother with whom the daughters had a difficult relationship riven with arguments and fights morphs into a maternal figure who was nothing but sweetness and light. The father who never had time for his kids while alive is celebrated as a benevolent patriarch who led by example. The spouse who was controlling or emotionally distant is portrayed as the ideal partner who could do no wrong. 

I suppose at one level this makes sense. When somebody you love dies you want to focus on their best selves — and the only way to do that is to wish away all their jagged edges. So you endow them with a persona that you wish they had had in real life. You lavish them with virtues they never had. You create memories that you wish existed. And in time you come to believe that your revisionism is, in fact, the truth. 

But the truth is that we do a disservice to those no longer among us when we ignore their full selves in favour of just celebrating their best bits. It takes courage to look at the life and legacy of the deceased in a way in which we acknowledge their flaws, their human failings, their failures. The truest expression of love is to admit that someone you loved was flawed — but was worthy of love, anyway. 

Selective memory can sometimes be a way of protecting ourselves from hurt. And what could hurt more than the thought that your mom didn’t truly love you, that your dad was indifferent to your success, or even that your husband/wife regretted marrying you. But it is only when we admit these possibilities and learn to go beyond them to arrive at a purer love that we can truly honour the dead. 

The bell tolls...

Death comes calling in almost every household as Covid ravages our nation

 

On Monday, 3 May, Delhi recorded 448 deaths from Covid. One of them was my brother-in-law.

 

When my sister made a group video call to her daughters and me late at night, worried that my brother-in-law was having trouble breathing, despite being on an oxygen concentrator, none of us realized that the end was only an hour or so away. My brother-in-law was struggling for breath, but he was still well enough to speak. We tried to rally him around, encouraging him to do prone breathing. The nurse in attendance gave him his prescribed injections and set up a saline drip.

 

We thought he was feeling better when he got up and – assisted by the nurse and my sister – went to the loo. But the moment he came back and lay down on the bed again, he simply stopped breathing. We realized that only when we heard my sister’s panicked cries. The nurse tried to do CPR, but to no avail. The oximeter went blank, and he was gone. All we were left with were my sister’s heartbreaking sobs of anguish and disbelief.

 

We stayed on the call with her for another couple of hours, trying to comfort her as best we could. But what comfort can you offer a wife who has seen her husband pass away in front of her eyes? 

 

There are no words.

 

And in Covid times, there are no hugs either. There is no comforting embrace to offer. There is no shoulder for the bereaved to cry on. There is no presence of family to provide some solace and balm. 

 

In the absence of this, there is just a piercing loneliness. You are alone with your grief, alone with your thoughts, alone with your regrets, alone with your memories. 

 

There may be other people at the end of a video call, but to all intents and purposes, you are alone. 

But that is the nature of death in the times of Covid. You die alone, those that are left behind mourn alone, and you then begin the slow process of recovery all on your own. I can’t even begin to grapple with the unfathomable sorrow of it all. 

 

Not that my family is alone in suffering this loss. Thousands of families across the country are dealing with bereavement as Corona deaths mount with every passing day. But as we count our dead, we must not forget that those souls who have left us are not just statistics that tell us the story of how this pandemic has ravaged our country. Each of these numbers is a person who meant the world to those who loved him; who was, in fact, somebody’s entire world. 

 

My sister’s entire world, for instance, revolved around her husband. In recent years, as his health declined, she became his primary caregiver, monitoring his sugar levels and blood pressure with a zeal that would do any professional nurse proud. Her day was measured by the doses of medicines she would dole out to him. Her mission every day was to cook something that would tempt his appetite even a little. And once he went down with Covid, she monitored his oxygen levels with a hawk eye, adjusting the oxygen concentrator ever so often.

 

But her best efforts were not good enough in the face of the implacable march of this deadly disease. And now she has been left alone to mourn, even as she tries to recover from her own Covid infection. 

 

My brother-in-law’s last moments, which we witnessed on that video call, haunt all of us. There is a sense of abject helplessness, that we could do nothing to help him take just another breath, and then another and another… There is the horror of seeing someone you love pass away in front of your eyes, and not being able to even reach out and hug them close in their last moments.

 

But I hope in time that we will not remember him, Satish Kumar Bharadwaj, by the manner of his passing, but by the way he lived his life. That we will remember his unconditional love for his wife and daughters, we will celebrate his unquenchable zest for life, and we will keep the memory of his joyful spirit alive in our hearts.

 

The bell tolls for thee...

Given the fragility of life, it makes sense to make the most of every moment granted to us

Even though I never knew Wendell Rodricks particularly well – I only ever met him on a couple of occasions – I was still shattered to hear of his passing. For one thing he was only 59, an absurdly young age to die. And then there was the fact that news of his demise came out of the blue, administering a shock to all those who knew him – or even just knew of him. But more than that, his death also came as a reminder of the fragility of human life. We may be alive and well, feverishly planning our future one minute; and gone to the great beyond the next, with all our plans left undone. 

The truth that we rarely have the courage to face up to is that our lives may end at any moment. There is no guarantee of getting up in the morning when we go to sleep at night. But even though from time to time we all employ the cliché of ‘living as if every moment would be our last’ we don’t always practice what we preach. 

But Wendell’s passing got me thinking. If I knew that I had only a finite amount of time left on earth, what would I do with it? Well, here’s what I came up with:

• Forgive and forget: All of us carry around grievances – justified or not – against some people in our lives. And very few of us can see a way to get beyond them. So, the bitterness festers and destroys relationships. Anger seeps deep within us and becomes our default emotion. And soon we are so locked into our positions that we can’t break out of them. Well, I’m going to let these intimations of mortality push me into making an effort to break those patterns and find a way to get past my anger and resentment. I’m going to try and forgive those have sinned against me; and ask for forgiveness from those I have sinned against. Forgetting is a bit harder than forgiving, but I am going to make that effort nonetheless. 

• Open lines of communication: With the pace of modern life overwhelming us all, we have lost the fine art of conversation. Rarely if ever do we ever chat about the things that matter with the people we love and cherish. We would much rather Whatsapp than have a phone conversation. We eat our dinner in front of the television watching a Netflix show rather than at the table where we can speak to each other. And even when we do talk, it is about mundane things like what to make for lunch or who will pay the electricity bill instead of meaningful things that could bring us closer to one another. That’s one thing I am determined to change. Communication is the key to healthy relationships – and to a happier life. And those two goals are going to be my primary motivation now.

• Tell the people you love that you love them: Whenever there is an outpouring of love for a recently-deceased person on social media, I can’t help but wonder how many of those paying tribute ever said all these lovely things to the person when he or she was alive. My guess is that very few – if any – did. So, my resolution from now on is to tell the people I love – family, friends, colleagues – that I love them when they are still around to appreciate the sentiment. And I am going to do that not just by words (though a well-timed “I love you” never goes unappreciated) but by deed as well. That means making time for them, taking an interest in their lives, even buying them the odd, unexpected gift – anything that shows that they matter to me.

• Start a gratitude journal: Yes, I know, it sounds like the kind of thing that Gwyneth Paltrow would recommend on her website, Goop. But sometimes even Paltrow gets it right. And even though I was initially skeptical about the idea, I have started penning down one thing I am grateful for every day. And I have found that it concentrates the mind remarkably, forcing me to focus on the positive rather than dwell on the negative. And that’s not a bad way to negotiate life when you think about it. 

• Stop procrastinating: I am a past master at this. I sit down to write my book (a sequel to Race Course Road; coming soon, I promise!) and go down the rabbit hole of Twitter instead. I settle down with a book that I have been longing to read and get distracted by the news about the Delhi election. When I should be thinking of my column, I go into some sort of displacement activity like cleaning out my closet. All that comes to an end now. I am going to focus on the things that matter, stop wasting time to social media or mindless TV-watching. 

And yes, I am going to live my life as if every moment might be the last. And maybe, just maybe, you might want to do that too.

So sorry for your loss...

Lessons learnt from bereavements, new and old

There is something about death that makes us exceedingly uncomfortable. We don’t want to imagine a time when our parents will no longer be around. We don’t want to dwell on the prospect of our own deaths. And we don’t even want to think about the possibility that some of us may survive our own children.

As a result, we are completely unprepared when death comes visiting in our vicinity. We can only guess how our parents would have liked their funeral arrangements to go, having never discussed anything quite so unpleasant with them. So, we flounder around, half-mad with grief, trying to work out how best to send them off. We don’t write our wills or put our affairs in order, because, you know, that would be tempting fate. And all too often we leave an almighty mess behind for our heirs to sort out – yes, the ones we are sure will live on long after we are dead and gone.

And such is our unexpressed but deeply-felt horror of death, that we don’t quite know how to deal with those who are newly bereaved. We want to express our condolences, we would like to be sensitive to their loss, and we certainly empathize with their pain (especially if we have experienced it ourselves). But there is something about death that leaves us all a bit tongue-tied. We simply can’t summon up the vocabulary to vocalize our thoughts. And so, we fall back on platitudes, cringing within ourselves even as we mutter them, knowing that we are bringing no comfort to those grieving.

Or maybe that’s just me. I still remember the acute discomfort I felt when I called upon a young mother in my neighbourhood who had lost her young son to cancer. I had seen the child grow up before my eyes, seen him waste away as the disease took hold of him, spent time by his hospital bed, holding hands with his hollow-eyed mother. I even managed to endure the funeral, heartbreaking as it was.

It was when I called on the mother the next day that I ran mysteriously dry on words. What does one say to someone who has suffered a loss like that? Words seem so inadequate in situations like this. But I still tried, telling her how much he was loved, how he was in a better place, that he was no longer in pain, and that he would always live in our hearts.

Platitudes. Every single one that I could think of, trotted out so that I didn’t have to deal with the real emotions that the woman in front of me was experiencing. Platitudes. That distanced myself from her pain and suffering. Platitudes. That allowed me to reduce her unimaginable grief to proportions that I could deal with.

I went back home, feeling ashamed of myself.

Ever since then, whenever I have had to deal with death and bereavement, I have tried to do a little better. And over years of mourning the loss of those I loved and those loved by them, this is what I have learnt.

• Sometimes it is okay to not say anything at all: If you can’t think of anything appropriate to say, stay silent. It is for times like this that hugs were invented. Just hold the grieving person close, letting them know that there is still love in their world. If they cry uncontrollably, don’t ask them to stop. Allow them to let their grief out by way of their tears. If you are crying too by then, it’s fine; don’t be embarrassed. Tears are probably the best way for you to communicate your feelings, until you are strong enough to find words.

• Allow everyone to grieve in their own particular way: There are some who can’t stop talking about the passing of a loved one. It is almost as if they are trying to desensitize themselves to what happened by telling the story over and over again. Just listen to them. That’s all they want. And then there are those who can’t bring themselves to talk about the one they lost. Respect their reticence. Recognize their fragility. And talk about something else. 

• Don’t avoid people who have suffered a bereavement simply because their grief makes you uncomfortable. It may be hard going sustaining a conversation with them. They may not be much fun for a long, long time. But stay the course. Don’t cross the road to avoid them because you can’t stand to see the sadness lurking in their eyes.

• Remember, grieving is a process. Don’t try to hurry it. Or ask people to start resuming their normal lives after a couple of months, as though there isn’t a person-shaped hole in their hearts. Allow them the time and space to come to terms with their loss, no matter how long it takes. 

• Acknowledge the fact that time does not heal; it just anaesthetizes. That when you lose a loved one, there is a tiny part of you that is always grieving. And that’s the way it should be. Because that’s the way we carry those we loved and lost in our hearts forever. 

Life is too short...

So, be sure to make the most of every moment you are granted

Life is too short. Life can be fragile. It can end in an instant. Live each moment as if it were the last, because it might well be.

We hear these phrases so often that it becomes easy to dismiss them as clichés. And we trot them out ourselves often enough without ever pausing to consider what they really mean. And then comes a moment when we come face to face with the reality of how short life really is, and how quickly it can end. And in that instant, we realise just how badly we have failed to make the most of it before it ended.

The transience of life was brought home to me last week when I attended the memorial service of a friend’s father, who had passed away suddenly in his late 60s, despite being in perfect health. And as I heard the moving tributes paid to him by his friends and family, I couldn’t help but think how much we take life for granted – right until the moment when it is rudely snatched away from us.

It is never easy to lose a parent. But that blow falls much harder when it lands on your solar plexus completely out of the blue. I know how that feels. In my early 20s, I awoke one morning to a phone call that told me that my father had passed away. I took a flight back home catatonic with shock. It had never occurred to me that my last conversation with him would, in fact, be my last conversation with him. How I wished then, clutching my grief to myself, that it had not been quite so banal. How I berated myself for not saying all the things that I would never again get to say.

That’s the thing with sudden loss. You never really get a chance to make peace with it. No matter how much people try to convince you that this was for the best, and that it was good that death didn’t come after a long and painful illness, it is hard to reconcile yourself to a bereavement that comes out of nowhere. However debilitating a long illness may be, and however unbearable it is to see someone you love suffer, it gives people the chance to get used to the idea that the end will come, sooner or later. And in some sense, the shock of loss is blunted, if only slightly.

But when life ends in an instant, all that remains is regret for all the stuff that you did not get to do, the things you never got to say, the fights that remained unresolved, the anger never expressed, the love never given voice to, the hugs never exchanged.

And that’s when you realise that the phrase ‘live every moment as if it might be the last’ is not a cliché. It is a truth that we should wake up to every morning and clutch to ourselves every night when we go to sleep.

On a more mundane, everyday level, this means getting your affairs in order. Don’t put off writing your will because you feel that it is tempting fate, or simply because you think that you are far too young to think of stuff like that. Make sure your spouse/parent/child knows where the keys to the bank locker are and what the combination to the safe is. If you want to be an organ donor, sign up now. Don’t burden your kids with the decision of how your medical care should go; leave clear instructions while you are still in control of all your faculties.

But while taking care of the practicalities, don’t let the emotional side of life slide past you. Hold your kids tight every day and tell them how much you love them. Kiss your spouse goodbye every morning when you leave the house. Don’t ever go to bed angry; always make up before your head hits the pillow. And most importantly, don’t leave anything – good, bad or ugly – unsaid. Express your anger and resentment and get it out of your system. Reconcile your differences. Share your feelings with those who matter while you can; or be racked with regret later.

And while you’re at it, don’t put off anything for tomorrow that you could do today. Don’t postpone that family holiday for the following summer because you are overworked at the office. If you’re missing a friend, pick up the phone and speak to her now. Get your grandmom to tell you the stories of her childhood. Start that book you’ve been meaning to read forever. Make your own bucket list, and promise yourself you’ll tick one thing off every week.

Yes, life is far too short. It can end in an instant. So, be sure to make every moment count.