“She will-she won’t; she will-she won’t; she will-she won’t” kept repeating in rhythm as I climbed the stairs. At third floor, huffing at “…she won’t”, I dragged the few steps to the door. ‘She won’t.” announced the ding-dong door bell.
“How has she been today, Kamalamma?”I asked of the domestic help as she opened the door.
“Manageable, akka*…Can I go now?”
“Yes. Don’t come in late tomorrow. I have a meeting and I must leave early.”
The front door banged shut. ”She-won’t; she-won’t; she-won’t…” the grandfather wall clock continued the litany. It seemed unreal that elsewhere people had noisy, alive homes….
“Mama? How are you today?” She was seated at the window staring at the clouds. She looked up and squirmed-like avoiding a stranger on a crowded bus. The empty look in her eyes meant she wasn’t lucid now. She could neither understand what I said nor say what she wanted to. She went back to staring at the clouds. She won’t…she can’t-I had to remind myself again. Alzheimer’s was an impassive hell and I still could not accept that it had snared mama.
Her note-book of her musings and poems lay on the table by her. Was she trying to read? I picked up the book and thumbed a page randomly. She had not written since several months-she couldn’t.
“… At a tug of war
memories and dreams.
Bygone years versus morrow’s fears.
Let go the tug, let go the thug…”
She had scant memories and probably was incapable of dreams now too. It sounded so lonely.
“I had a dream today!” Her words startled me to senses. She was sounding so normal. It had been over a week since I had heard that lucidity in her voice.
“Oh, mama!” I was by her side, kissing her. “It’s me-Sanju…Sanjana…your daughter.”
“Yes…yes, honey…of course.” Tears streamed down her cheeks too.”What’s wrong with me Sanju? Things are very blurred and then suddenly become clear…Am I sleeping a lot? Am I on some…sleep-givers? (For tranquillizers) Or am I sick?” It was a heart-wrench. The poor thing did not even know she has been sick for over months now.
“Oh mama! You…you..Have a small problem,” I said wishing the problem was a small as I made it sound to be. “You’ll get over it. It will be OK.” I lied again making sure she saw my back and not my eyes. She was very shrewd and could read emotions on my face like a computer interpreting a data!
********
“Are you both in love?” She had asked when we had got home that night. I had introduced Nikhil to her in the evening. I wanted her to meet him in a public place and had chosen a mall, just so that the cacophony could down her senses and confuse her to think us as just friends for now.
“Uh? Oh moms! Can we stop this?” I wanted to tell her all about him though. “I am tired and want to sleep.”
“And dream of him… I know you want to talk. You are in love with him! ”It was no longer a question but a flat statement. Later, she accepted him in my life without much discussion. That had actually disappointed and even worried me. We had been twosome for twenty eight years and with Nikhil entering my life, she had to make way. I wanted to know what she felt but she never did let me.
“…at times, letting go happens in installments…like a tree shedding its leaves in autumn, only to regrow much greener in the coming spring. Or like a flower that slowly lets go its fragrance- knowing it can never be the same…and finally dying fragrance-less…” she had one such entry in her musings and it was after Nikhil was well into our lives.
“Isn’t Nikhil coming in today?” again she startled me.
“No.”Not today. Not tomorrow
“Has it been sometime since I saw him?”
“Yes.” Eleven months.
“Have you fixed your wedding date?”
“No…No…” I couldn’t get myself to say ‘No wedding’ to her. She might forget it in a few minutes or hours…why should I hurt her when she was lucid? ”No…not yet.”
“Don’t put it off for far too long.” And as an after-thought, after five minutes-“Say, am I delaying this marriage? I have some illness…are you waiting for me to get well?” My throat lump grew bigger…I wanted to hug her and cry. Like I always did when I lost. “Momma, there will be no marriage. He walked out…because you could never get better…” She would cry too. And forget the whole thing within a few hours!
“Let me lay the table for dinner.” I had to get away before she could read me.
*****************
She had waited, table laid, that night. And when I got home at ten, she had set up her fireworks. That was the first time I had seen her so enraged and almost violent! She knew I was out with Nikhil. She knew I would be skipping dinner at home. Yet she had laid the table for the two of us.
“How dare you keep me waiting? Without even a phone call? And you come in at this hour and say you are full…I have been starving waiting for you!” Eyes blazing and tear laden she had screamed.
“Momma! I told you this evening….”
“What? What?...What had you told me?”
‘That…”
“…that you would be partying while I starved? Who were you with….that your friend Sahil fellow?”
And that blew my fuse. How dare she insult me like this-purposefully making a mistake with Nikhil’s name as if he was nothing more than an acquaintance to me and her? Was this her way of venting out her jealousy and possessiveness? And what if I had been with him? I slammed my room door shut and slumped down bursting with tears. Had this to happen this evening? She had just ruined the best evening of my life! Nikhil had proposed to me and I was lost in the clouds….I wanted to share this wonderful news with the only other person who mattered to me in my life... and this was the reception she awarded me!
I sulked for two days. Banged doors, kept silent and preferred to eat my meals alone. On the third day she spoke to me. “Are you upset with something Sanju? Did you have a row with Nikhil?”I was stunned-she kicks a ruckus one night and forty eight hours later, acts as if nothing ever happened! She must be coming to terms with her petty feelings of jealousy and possessiveness. Good. No age is too old for learning new lessons in Life. By the end of the week I had learned to accept that it was natural for her to feel insecure. I believed it to be a passing phase.
But she proved me wrong one Tuesday evening. She wasn’t at home when I came from office. She hadn’t come by nine and it was very uncharacteristic of her. I called up a few of her friends and enquired discretely if she had come. Negative. As I was leaving the flat to lodge a missing person complaint, she called.
“Sanju! I am lost. I can’t seem to find my way back home!”
The next day, the doctor’s diagnosis shattered and changed our lives. Her memory loss, fugue, fits of rage, inability to comprehend…all explained her disease. Had I been less preoccupied with my personal love life, I could have identified subtle symptoms much earlier.” And done what?” the doctor had asked. Alzheimer’s had no cure. It had to be lived and only got severe with passing time. “The disease taxes the caregivers and I suggest you hire help if you can’t be with her most of the times. “ Kamalamma was hired then. During the first few months her symptoms were mild and she was aware of her condition and took appropriate measures too.
“Sanju, sometimes letting go demands efforts from both parties involved. Look at me. I’d let go of life, only it doesn’t. Alz- has taken a fondness to me!!” she had said one night after dinner. She talked so normally at such times that I wondered if the diagnosis needed a relook. Until she reverted back to her wrong speech and Alzheimeric behavior.
“Say, fixed a wed date? Should I talk to Nikhil’s…men (for people)?”
“No. Mama…Nikhil has been transferred to Delhi…so…”
“When is he transferring? Could the marriage.. not be… (halting for three minutes, searching her vocabulary)…king Solomon (for solemnized)…before that?”
“No. Shall I make your bed?” She did not understand. I had to mime “sleep?” She just nodded owing to a complete loss of words. I was thankful that she could not ask any more questions. But I wished she could, I wished I could just pour out myself to someone…Nikhil and I had the bitter arguments for several weeks.
“She will only get worse. With both of us working and in a distant new city, we cannot afford to keep her with us…”
“Please…let us not go over this again. I am not willing to let mamma stay in an…Asylum…that is what it is…irrespective of what soft names you give the Helping homes. No Nikhil.NO!”
“Is that final?”
“I am afraid, yes!” I hated the finality in both our voices. I was trying my best to keep from breaking down and I knew I would fail before long.
“Sanjana, learning to let go needs a lot of wisdom…”
“…and ruthlessness. Don’t you see? She is all I have…all I had till you came in. I am aware of the struggles she went through as a single parent…raising me, caring for me…she is my older self, for heaven’s sake! I can’t desert her…and of all the times now-when she needs me most!”
“Sanju, listen. She will not remember any of that in a few months or years from now. You will be left alone at the memory tango!” He was running out of patience.
“That was particularly mean! How can you?” I had trembled. Despite his poor choice of words, I knew what he said was true. “Maybe…but I won’t leave her. We either stay back here or she comes with me!”
“That is- if I let you come with me…” I dreaded when his voice was this dead-pan. It often signaled an unfavourable decision.
“Would you care to explain?” I actually knew it would come to this finally.
“You know it…Sanju don’t let it come to this. We will be forced to call it off…you know…” That was the second terrible moment after her disease-sentence!
“Are you calling it quits? Just because you want me only for yourself…are you breaking the engagement because I care for my mother as much I love you? What a huge mistake I would have made getting married to such a selfish man.Let me tell you this-if you bring down the choices to between a heartless you and my mother who has always struggled for me…the choice is obvious. I can’t leave her for you. Thanks for your time…”as I got up to leave, he was beside me.
“Sanju, think over practically… not emotionally.”
“Uh? Mr. Nikhil scumbag, what do you mean not emotionally? She taught thousands of students and was fondly called a walking encyclopedia! And only I know how much it hurts to see such a woman struggle with something so basic as just being herself! Sometimes she thinks even I am a stranger…Oh! Why should I bother you with unnecessary details….Bye!”And so the rift grew by the day and neither of us attempted to contact the other…I wondered if Nikhil was serious about us at all. Had he grown cold feet? And used mother as an excuse, knowing too well that I wouldn’t oblige.But wasn’t there some truth in what he said? Wouldn’t a good institution meant for people like her offer a better and more professional care to her? Should I look up…I would stop myself…Am I thinking of getting rid of her? No, mama…never!
That night I shared her bed. She wasn’t sleepy and was lucid most times. We chatted well into the early hours…I jogged memories for both of us, for she could not remember a single event of our past! She listened to it as if it were for the first time-like a child, in rapt attention and trying to register every information though I knew that by morning her mind would be clean as a new slate!
“We never did get Juno back, did we?” she suddenly asked. Juno was our Labrador who had disappeared-and that was over ten years ago. She remembered that!
“No. We could never nab the thieves.”
“Do you still think he was stolen?”
“Wh-at? Of course!”
“He was not a small pup to be stolen. He could have gone away himself!”That was her poor-judgment example of Alzheimer’s.
“Mama! Aren’t dogs faithful?! If anything, they come back searching for their homes,not go away from one!” Comprehending abstract ideas was also difficult in her condition.
“But what if he did not want us? Do we know that for sure? He might have let go of us…for whatever reason!” she looked at me in my eyes… “Holding on might actually be a default to letting go…till you realize there is a choice…!” Was she now in the jargon phase? The next minute she looked dead blank.” I want to sleep...”
The days got more alzhemeric to me as well…monotonous and nothing worth reminiscence. That was actually the proverbial storm. At half past 2 on Wednesday Kamalamma called me in panic.
“Akka, amma has fallen down from the cot…I can’t wake her up!”
Six tense hours and a brain surgery later I was updated about her.
“We have managed to drain off the blood clot that she had sustained when she fell. It did not look very good. She isn’t out of danger till the next forty eight hours. She has slipped into coma which makes her unresponsive to the external world. We hope she will come out of it as she heals…” the doctor said, the irony of his words completely lost on him. The world had longed ceased to exist in her Alzhemeric life….only now they had a name for it-Coma! “One of the kin may now see her for a minute.”
“Uh..There is no other kin…only me. Can I see her?” She looked so tranquil and beautiful despite a huge white bandaged head. Suddenly I realized that there was no one else if she were to go! Demented or not…I had her, I needed her…and if she went…? ”Mama, please, please don’t let go..Hang on..!” I must have been sobbing loudly because the nurse came over and said-“Shh..Quiet please..Over here..” she had gently led me off…
She did let go-that night at a quarter to two. A large chunk of me gone…gone forever…gone from me and from her treacherous disease. “She has escaped further humiliation from Alzheimer’s,” they had tried to console me. But…what had I now? A house full of memories and a life full of emptiness…Letting go is so painful when it isn’t mutual and when it is simply one-sided –just like love which hurts when it is one-sided!
Nikhil haunted me now more than ever. I had lost the only two people I loved the most in less than two years! They put me on tranquillizers and Kamalamma was always around watching me-maybe they thought I would commit suicide.
‘No. Akka is sleeping. Could you come after five in the evening?” she was sending someone away.I hated visitors. They had only sympathizing words…but I wanted mommy, I wanted Nikhil…I wanted a life.There was suddenly some commotion at my bed room door.
“No, no, mister. Please don’t go in. She hates to be disturbed.” Kamalamma followed him into my room. My heart lurched, skipped several beats and started erratically again.
“Nikhil?”
“Why did you not call me? Or tell me?”He looked so distraught.
“What? Oh! Did it matter to you at all?” All the bitterness came rushing back…How he had refused to have mom stay with us… “Look now…she is gone…!”I whispered.
He was by me, cradling me saying-“Oh, I am so sorry, really-really sorry. I was such an oaf…To think and behave that way…Actually I came for you…at the office they told me…”
“You came for me? Why? To offer condolences?”
“Please Sanju…don’t be so bitter. Please forgive me? I..I came because I missed you so much. There was not a single day that went without me thinking of you…And then I realized that when out of sight isn’t out of mind, you have really never let go…I came back for you…and your mom…but then-“
Mommy! He has come back for us! We can now be together and you need not be in some Helping home…! Oh! But she is gone…
“Nikhil, you have a sense of perfect timing! You come back here after my mom is dead with a cock and bull story of missing me…” I spat out in horror even as I realized that I was saying all the wrong things. I wanted to go with him! Mommy wanted that too!
“Yeah. Don’t I appear a villain? But I won’t ask you now Sanjana. Many things have changed for you…you might have let go of me that long back when I behaved so badly. I…I just came to say sorry…You know I was fond of her too. And even she was.” He turned to go but not before I caught the tears in his eyes.
“Sanju…letting go demands more courage than holding on…do you have it in you? To go on living without Nikhil?” mommy was speaking…
“Nikhil! Will you marry me?” I blurted at his back, surprising myself for the second time.
“Yes, oh, yes!” he was back by my side as Kamalamma hurried off, happy and embarrassed, leaving the two of us to ourselves.
*************************************************************
*-akka-elder sister in Kannada
