Those interested in reading or sharing this series can download it as a single PDF document.
I am grateful for the many letters and notes and messages that you have sent after reading this series. Thank you.
Those who wish to read it online, here is the table of contents in order:
I had not intended to write this series. But over time, I realized that the pain of that period still lingered in me. I felt responsible for all that had happened. To see a loved one go through so much pain and suffering is not easy, especially if that pain and suffering is a result of decisions that were made. She trusted me to make those decisions, and I made them with the utmost care. I read every medical journal that talked about valve thrombosis, the various approaches to treating it, the risks of thrombolysis versus re-do valve surgery, the mechanics of heart bypass, the mechanism and aftermath of embolic strokes, and so on. I asked innumerable questions to her doctors. I got second opinions. I read of thrombolytic agents and which ones to use and what dosage was to be applied.
But in the end, our hand was forced by her deteriorating condition and by the many doctors who told us there was no other way but to operate on her.
Before giving our consent to heart surgery, I had asked her a question. I had asked her if I was in a similar situation, if my heart had failed, and all the doctors were telling us that surgery was my only option, would she have tried to persuade an unwilling me to go through with it? To my continued distress to this day, she had said that she, gentle and loving as she is, would have not.
Perhaps she did not realize the gravity of her situation. But the fact remains that I, advised by the doctors, made her agree to the re-do surgery.
We, or rather I, made the decision to go in. I was the one who signed the consent form, acknowledging that I understood the risks. I live with that decision, and its aftermath.
Though it is not part of the standard protocol, I wish I had asked the hospital to do a brain scan on her during the 40 hours that she was unconscious after her heart surgery. I wish I knew that there was major risk of a vascular accident during or after her surgery and I wish we had caught the stroke in time. In the aftermath, I asked the attending surgeons and doctors to revise their protocol to include this check, but I do not know if anything will come of my recommendation.
But I was not, and am not, a medical professional. I trusted the hospital and the doctors and the medical journals. But my wife - she only trusted me. I cherish this trust, but I also have to live with the responsibility of this trust.
If I was an illiterate man who had little idea of pressure gradients in the heart, I would have taken the relatively easier path of just accepting the doctors' decisions. I would not have made them "my" decisions. I would have obeyed the experts and accepted every procedure, every complication, fatalistically. But I was born to know, and to question, and so I also have to live with the limits of my knowledge and with the limited knowledge of the experts. They, and I, tried to do their best, but it was not good enough.
The difference is: the doctors went home and attended to other patients the next day. My wife's post-surgical complications would be a statistic in their long career. But for my wife, and for me, our life was transformed in those few days. We, as all patients, have to live the rest of our lives with the consequences, while for the doctors it is, hopefully, a learning.
It was not their fault. I believe they tried their very best. I hold no bitterness toward them.
This pain in me is mine own. It is irrational, but I do not deny it.
It is not unlike the pain of a mother who kissed and goaded her unwilling child into the school bus, and the child later bled to his death in a bus accident. She was hardly "responsible". She did everything out of immense love and with the very best of intentions. But if you are at all human, you will understand her guilt.
To heal the pain of that decision of mine, and the immense suffering for her that followed, this series is an attempt at what I can only term as Penance. It is my cross to bear, and through my writing, I hope to, perhaps, forgive myself.
The second reason is to give anybody who reads this series a message of hope and love. To give the reader a sense of home and of being away from it, and what it means to one's heart. To communicate the power of love. To tell the reader that it is possible to transcend tragedy and darkness. It may not always be possible, and every story is different, but our story ends as a beginning. We were fortunate, and blessed, to have come through, and I wanted to share this tale of overcoming.
Lastly, this series is a tribute to my wife, and to the love in her heart. She is a marvelous woman: simple, loving and truthful. She has not seen much of the world, and perhaps because of that, she is innocent in a way that is rare and remarkable.
She will perhaps never want to, or be able to, write her story in the way I have done. She may never read it. It will be too traumatic for her to recall those times in this detail. But her story needed to be told, I feel. She is of this earth, an unknown woman, but this story of her struggle needed to be better known. It is my homage to her resilience, her patience, and to her fortitude.
I thought I knew much. But she has taught me much more.
...
Through this, I remain grateful to our two friends, and our siblings, especially my younger brother, who all shall remain unnamed, and who gave us their time, their energy and their affection. To her parents, and to mine, who worried for us and sent her their prayers. And to our well-wishers, who remained concerned for our well-being.
Chapter IX
Post Tenebras, Lux
I am reborn.
I have come through.
When I was born the first time, the first child, the daughter, I was named after the full moon. And today, as then, I am bathed in light.
From the bottomless labyrinth of the deepest despair, I
have risen. I have crept and I
have crawled and I have climbed, and climbed till I could breathe no more, and
I see the sun now.
There was that time, and a dreadful time it was, when I did not even dream. I was in the darkest valley one could scarce imagine, and I was all alone. I
did not know how I had fallen, and how I would rise again. They had broken my back and my ribs, and they had put daggers into me. I had bled in
cascades to within a whisper of death.
I was parched and not a drop of water did I find. My tongue and my lips had become heavy with salt. I could hear nothing but strange sounds of
creatures I had never seen or known of.
In that dreamless dark night, I floated endlessly. I tried to hold on to something, anything, that
could bear my mass, but there was nothing.
I felt weightless, emotionless, thoughtless. That world was empty, and endless, and without relief.
But the faint embers of my life had not totally extinguished. They pulsed with the little drops of blood that were left in my broken frame. My heart was beating, ever so feebly, with little to flow in my veins. With only one hand, my left, I tried to pour the elixir of hope on those embers. But there was no hope left in me.
As night flowed into endless night, I saw, or did I
dream? a distant light. A faint light it
was, but it was there. That soothing
light made the infinite darkness seem less frightful.
That light was not unfamiliar, but I did not recognize it
fully then.
Was this the light that I had seen eons ago? Its memory seemed buried in a far corner of
my being. Was this the light around
which I had circled one day? It was that, wasn’t it?
I was tired beyond my limits. I wanted to just sleep forever, but that
light! That light danced and that light
came closer and caressed my shattered limbs. As I slipped into slumber, toward eternal sleep, that light gently shook me again into wakefulness.
That light became my hope.
If there was this light, this darkness surely was not endless, it had
its end. It was not infinite, as it had
seemed.
As I, with effortless effort, rose from my tired slumber, the
light entered me and lit me from within.
I held it, or did it hold me I wonder. I would not let it go now. I treasured it, nourished it, and made it my most precious friend.
My fears and pains were there still, but that radiance made them bearable. I breathed in the air
around me. With that light in me, the
air was no longer a stranger. I could
not speak, nor was there another soul to hear my silence. But that light within my being told me that I
was not alone.
It told me that I had many dreams to dream, that I had many mountains yet to see, that many swans and seagulls were waiting for me in their oceans. That I was again going to kiss that red sparrow in my orchid that used to prance near my feet. That what was broken could be made whole again.
But I
had to follow the light and not get lost again.
As I let that light be my guide, it gave me strength and hope. I thought my journey toward the sun was going
to be eternal, but the light whispered to me that it wasn’t. That only if I did not give up, only if I
kept walking through my despair, I would find that my despair was not my
master. That I would overcome it.
And through many strange mazes and tunnels and doorways did I pass. And I kept on. Resolute, hopeful, fearful, I kept on.
As I emerged into the light of the sun and fulfilled my destiny,
I realized, with bliss, what that inner light was.
The light of the sun was much grander, and astonishing to behold, but my
own light inside of me was its part.
The light of the sun and the light within me had become one. They merged, and showed me that I was that light.
That light was love.
Because I had found and cherished love in my heart, I was able to see love beyond me. And that love, within and without, was me.
I had become love. I was love. I am love.
My glow, which isn't only mine anymore, is the absolute utter and pure benediction of life.
My journey from darkness to light doesn't end here, as my journey in light has just begun. The mountains and the oceans await me. As it once was, so it shall be again, that I shall be true to my name, and I shall take my ancient place with the stars.
I stretch my arms and my love expands to all that is visible and invisible. I was adrift, and now I am home. And my home and my heart are one.
I bless all those who are lost, and those who are on their journey. May all those who drift into darkness find their light again. May their hearts be home.
ॐ असतोमा सद्गमय । Lead us from the unreal to the realA Few Thousand Words
In Darkness
(to be concluded)
I know that this was Life,—the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
Chapter 7
The Weightless Weight
She was home. She was
extraordinarily weak. She had lost
fifteen pounds during that banishment away from home. Her body was tattooed with innumerable needle
pricks and internal bleeds. Her hair were in shambles. But she was at peace.
As she entered her home, she breathed in the long-desired, long-awaited air of her past, and absorbed the love and belonging
that was all hers. Her soul was soothed, and her restlessness went away as she took step after step inside her house. She looked around with tired eyes, and the sight of every little familiar thing gave her nourishment. That chair! That towel! That mirror! She became languorous, and
lay down in her bed and went to sleep.
I could not have enough of looking at her sleeping peacefully in her own room, the room that was built of affection and understanding. I had waited for this day for so long. Her own pillow, her blanket that smelled of love and jasmine, offered her the embrace of her own world.
I felt as if we had just married, and this was my bride coming to her conjugal home.
In the coming weeks and months, I knew that we both had to climb a steep mountain, whose peak we could
not yet see from here below. Without saying anything, we were joined in our
resolve. We were together now, and our
love would see us through to the other side.
Together, we would climb. Holding
hands, walking shoulder to shoulder, we would climb. We would get tired, and we would catch our breath, rest for an afternoon, and with renewed resolve, we would climb.
It was an immense vindication of our decision to come back
home "against medical advice" that she healed as if miraculously.
She started walking within a few days. She never needed a cane, what to speak of needing a wheelchair. Her right arm, though very weak, was moving again. Though I had brought a supply of thick liquids for her, she never had a
need for those. She started having
normal liquids. In tiny gulps, ever so
slowly, but she tasted water and milk and tea and coffee again. She would
cough, and learn to swallow properly, and try again. And she started chewing again. It was utterly remarkable. And immensely fulfilling for both of us.
I bathed her, and fed her, and held her as she tried to walk, and made her again see the
trees, the rivers, the birds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Nature
took over, and she slowly regained her weight and her strength. I tried to engage some therapists, but it was
hard to find a good one. And by necessity and by desire, I ended up as her therapist. I made her do little
exercises every day, and fed her milk shakes, smoothies, eggs, porridge, and bowls
of soup.
She started smiling again, and every little victory over her
condition gladdened her heart. Her
headaches were now a thing of the past.
She was on her way to becoming herself again.
We never spoke about the hospitals and of our trials there.
Her eyes would well up when she saw her wedding bangles, or an ornate dress, or the
photos from our journeys. But as I held
her in my arms, her tears would stop, and she would be at peace again.
A day after her homecoming, I took her to a hair salon. The hairdresser looked at her hair and
stepped back in horror when I told her we needed to cut them short. She would not do it. It was a sacrilege, she said. She could not bear to cut such long hair and
have them fall on the floor. It had taken years and
decades for those long hair to be, and it seemed so ruthless to put scissors to
them. But I convinced her that there was
no other way, that the hair were matted beyond redemption, and she with immense gentleness slowly cut them short. My wife did not flinch during that session,
and when afterward she looked at herself in the mirror, she looked almost
fashionably modern.
To climb a mountain is difficult only if one does not want to climb. To a mountaineer, or to one on a pilgrimage, every step of the ascent is sacred, and fulfilling. The legs may get tired, but one can rest. The strength comes only partly from the muscle. The real strength is in the heart.
(to be continued)
तुम जो सोचो वो तुम जानो हम तो अपनी कहते हैं
देर न करना घर जाने में वरना घर खो जायेंगे
You are wise perhaps, but I will speak my own truth
Do not be late in coming, or your home will be no more.
किन राहों से दूर है मंज़िल कौन सा रस्ता आसाँ है
हम जब थक कर रुक जायेंगे औरों को समझायेंगे
Which paths lead nowhere, and which paths lead to home
Weary from our own journey, we shall teach others.
Chapter 6
The Way Home
Every day was a day of hope for her, that today at last I would take her home. But every day, her hopes were dashed. The hospital was ready to send her away but not to home. Instead, they insisted, and I reluctantly agreed, that she should go to another kind of hospital, where she could undergo intensive therapy.
They scheduled her departure on a Saturday, and there were
some delays in the paperwork. It was
possible that she had to stay for another few days. I would not, could not, accept that. I knew that she was at the end of her tether,
and she would not, could not, bear me again telling her that she could not
leave. That would crush her spirit,
perhaps irrevocably. In her fragile mind,
she now had a hazy idea that it was now only a matter of another day. On Thursday, and on Friday, she said: “Today
is the day, right? We are going to go,
right?”
I made dozens of calls, to her insurance, to the hospitals,
to her case manager, to her attendants, and made the paperwork move
through. Everything was ready, but the
hospital was not able to arrange an ambulance for her to leave. But I would not let her stay in that building
for another day, even if that meant I had to carry her in my arms.
And I did. I carried
her, and had her sit in our car, and she looked at the outside world with
surprise as we drove to the rehabilitation facility.
Her brain swelling had receded, but there were strange
headaches. She was frightened at what
must have been extremely unpleasant sensations as her brain tried to rewire
itself.
The rehabilitation center was a little more peaceful than
the hospital. She had her first bath in
over a month. She finally was able to
wear her own clothes. But durations and
times were not easy for her to understand.
She was left despondent as I parted from her every evening.
The emotions of being confined to hospital rooms, with
little understanding of the reasons of that confinement, were building up in
her. She had left one hospital for
another. Where was her home? Would she ever leave these rooms with the
nurses and the doctors and the therapists and the unpalatable food? Would her headaches ever end? Would her husband ever be with her for the night?
The cover of clouds had shifted, but a ferocious tempest was
building up on the horizon. Occasionally,
and out of nowhere, there were downpours. Oh look, there was a glimmer of the sun, but
the swirling clouds soon eclipsed it again.
Without warning, the winds howled and then died down. There were distant flashes of lightning, and
the birds who were protecting their nests trembled at every sound of thunder. Would they survive the storm?
It was a Saturday.
Like any other day, I drove to the rehab hospital to be with her. As I entered the room, she was lying on her
side, with what seemed like a smile. But
it was not a smile. Her face was tense
with emotion. She had been waiting for
me for what was to her an eternity. She had
waited and waited, and hours had passed, and days had passed, and years had
passed, and I had not come.
She saw me in front of her - and exploded without warning. That entire hospital was filled with a feeble woman’s screams. She would not stay there for another moment. She would crawl, if she could not walk. Her bed had guardrails, but she was ready to jump over them.
She
had been away from her home, and untold and unintelligible brutalities and indignities had been
heaped on her during this time. Who were
all these people who had ravaged her body? Why was she, the apple of her father's eye, allowed to be naked and needled in front of strange men? What had they done to her? What had happened? Where
was she? Why had she, the gentle flower, been plucked and plucked till nary a petal remained? Was there anyone else left in
the world? Her mother and her father, who had cared for her when she was an infant - and she was now again an infant - were millions of miles away. Her brother and her sister were continents away. Was it her destiny to spend night after lonely night in these impersonal rooms,
in strange beds, looking at the walls?
She did not say any of these things. She just screamed till her breath failed her. But I knew.
The light inside of her was blazing as it rejected the confines of her cage.
The cruel hospital administrator wanted to sedate her. When I asked him what, then, would he do when
the sedation wore off, he replied nonchalantly: “We will continue the dose every twelve
hours.”
I would not, not in a thousand years, allow my beloved to be put to sleep again. She had risen from the cold, dark grave. No one had the right to violate her dignity in this way, or to subdue her will to be free. They had saved her life perhaps, but they had also savaged her. She had been tortured enough. She would not, not if I was there, have sedatives injected into her against her will. She was feeble, and she was incoherent, but she was full of light. She would not go into darkness again.
As I left the room momentarily to speak to someone, the nurses tried to
inject her with something. She pushed
them away, saying words that still echo in my mind: “My husband will come and save
me. You wait and see.” "My husband." Her husband, who had taken the vows to protect her from harm. Who she trusted to be right, her knight. And who she depended on to care for her "in sickness and in health, until death do us part". Who else was for her, then and there, what was now her entire world? At that moment, I knew. I would not, could not, let her down. She would never regain her faith in her love if I came in but betrayed her, and allowed them to have their way. That would have pushed her into a darkness worse than death.
I would not collaborate in extinguishing that blaze of life.
I realized that if I was not present that day, they would have sedated her, plunging her into depression, and seeing her lack of improvement, eventually refer her to a permanent facility for stroke victims. And there she would remain, under sedation, under anti-depressants, on a wheelchair, away from all that was dear to her.
I put her clothes in a plastic bag. I gathered her belongings, including the useless combs and hairbrushes. I was made to sign a paper
which stated the hospital was not responsible for her anymore, as I was taking her
away “against medical advice.” I did not hesitate, not for one moment, to sign that woeful document. She would not stay in such a place where her
humanity was to be treated with Alprazolam.
I did not know what we would do, and how we would manage on
our own. But I knew that was the right
thing to do even if, once again, I had to carry her in my arms. In my heart, I told her: "I will make you whole, my love. I promise you. Let us go." She could not walk, nor eat, nor express herself. But I would make that happen, I promised her in silence. By all that was holy and good, I would make the flower that she was, bloom again.
In another hour, that tattered tender flower, which had been
blown around by the thunderstorm and the winds into fearsome strange lands of wolves and snakes, of volcanos and deep gorges, found itself again in its familiar orchid. Where
the soil, the flowers, the trees, the very air, was its own.
The storm had passed. There was a stillness and a fragrance of grace.
She was home.
She did not know then, or now. But this song was written for her.
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Chapter 5
The Pain of Love
It was not that she wanted me to stop coming to see her, but
she wanted me never to abandon her. If
God was with her, so was I. But the
hospital forbade us from being together.
As I, every day, walked through the hallway of the CVICU and approached
her room, I stopped for a moment to steel myself at what might await me, and
her, that day. Would this be a day of
darkness, or of light? Would there be agonized
moans, or would there be the sounds of a distant flute?
After weeks of delay, she finally was operated again, and
given a pacemaker. By now, she was
slowly moving her right leg and foot.
Her feeding tube remained in place, but the therapists had tried to make
her swallow spoonful of thick liquids.
She was trying hard to come back to light, as death and darkness had
loosened their grip on her. I would
spend my days in learning, doing, all that I could to scatter the clouds still over
her.
It had almost been a month that she had been admitted to the
hospital, and she had now gradually started speaking simple words again. I worked hard on her, but with loving
gentleness. Making her count from one to
ten, asking her to recite the days of the week.
She managed sometimes, and we celebrated those little but momentous
victories.
A nurse painted her nails, and I could not admire the nurse
more for her gesture. The speech
therapist, a wispy woman from West Virginia, was kind and understanding, and we
looked forward to her visits, as there was an added pleasure when she worked
with my wife.
She sometimes brought little bits of jam and ice-cream to
try and see if my wife could swallow.
After a month of not having had anything palatable, one day the
therapist asked my wife to try a bit of orange sorbet. I remember the joy on my wife’s face as she
nodded her head from side to side, expressing her pleasure at the sugary ice
mixture on her tongue. The exclamation “Delicious!”
was on her face, as she found herself unable to utter words of gratitude.
The speech therapist was determined to see her get better,
and I remain eternally grateful to her. My
wife was to go through a real-time X-ray to determine if her swallowing was
acceptable, or if food was entering her airway.
This speech therapist, Maggie, wanted to oversee this whole exercise,
and we of course wanted it to complete successfully.
But it would be many days before that study could be scheduled. And day after day, waiting in loneliness and
disability was taking a heavy psychological toll on my wife. And one day, as I was sitting by the
bed-side, a hospital administrator came and told us that they had done the
study on my wife, and unfortunately my wife was not able to swallow, and that
soon they would be making a hole in her stomach and feeding her from there. I was crestfallen. This setback was crushing. I explained this news to her, making it seem
a very temporary inconvenience, and she nodded in fake understanding. She did not deny that she had been taken for the X-ray without me. She had no idea what I was saying.
An hour later, the same administrator returned to the room
and apologized. He said he had made a
mistake and it was another patient who had failed, and my wife’s evaluation was
still to happen. I experienced a mixture
of happiness and anger. I was happy that
there was a mistake, but I was angry that there was a mistake. I was so sorry about the woman who had failed the study, but it was an unjust and sloppy insult to my wife
who, days ago, in a moment of defiance and resolution, had proclaimed to her mother
on speakerphone: “You shall see, I will overcome this. I will come and see you when I am well again.”
She was taken down for the swallow evaluation a few days
later, and I watched the X-ray screens as she was fed a little water, or a
little oatmeal. She could not chew, and she
could not drink plain water. But she
could swallow alright. She did overcome
that hill. The feeding tube was removed,
and bland, thick pastes of food were now to be brought to her three times a day. She ate almost nothing of those
pastes. I started making some better tasting
semi-liquid meals at home and brought them for her. Those tastes reminded her of home, and she
ate a little from those plastic cups.
As the time came closer for her to be discharged from the
CVICU, to another section of the hospital, I thought of ways to kindle her
memories. I showed her old photos, and
played old, familiar songs.
One of those songs was especially dear to us. It starts with the words: “The pain of love
is sweet, oh so exquisite. And this beautiful
pain nourishes these two hearts.”
I remember the evening when she started slowly humming these words as I played that song. Did my love nourish her heart? I have no doubt.
The sun was setting beyond the greyed window, but the light
inside her was getting stronger. Her
flame, deep inside her being, had stopped flickering, and was a steady glow
now.
She wanted me to take her home, but it was impossible. She would ask me again and again, not
understanding why she was still in this prison.
Was she not well? What had
happened? Why could she not move her
arm, or eat? I could not explain to her,
given her impoverished comprehension. She
still was very, very fragile, and was connected to wires and IV lines. We made her sit in a chair some days, and she
felt a deep unease and would want to lie down again. Unable to verbalize her desire to go back to
bed, she tried getting up from the chair herself, and fell down and stuck her
head on the tiled floor.
The doctors came rushing.
They feared that her brain might start hemorrhaging again. But the steady glow inside her did not
flicker. The CT scan did not show any
new bleeding. Her inner light was pale and still feeble, and cast many shadows, but it was steady.
The gods were now with her. Her prayers had been answered. The fragments of that old
song, for at least some moments of her agonizing day, day after day, in that vast alienating building, were on her dry tongue and on her dry, parched lips.
(to be continued)
“The strength and the beauty of a tender leaf is its vulnerability to destruction. Like a blade of grass that comes up through the pavement, it has the power that can withstand casual death.”
Chapter 4
The Compliment
We had once been to Africa.
As we were waiting to board a flight from Addis Ababa, a middle-aged
woman next to my wife told her: “What beautiful long hair you have. These are priceless.”
On the CVICU bed, as that oft-complimented woman struggled to breathe, and as
her brain swelling showed as yet no sign of abating, her very same beautiful
long hair, unwashed for many weeks had irreversibly matted and tangled. They had become impossible to handle. The nurses would try, and fail. They wanted to save her hair, as they could
do nothing to save her. The doctors were
in charge of her ebbing life, but the nurses, in their simple kindness, were alarmed about
her hair.
The days passed.
Slowly the drugs being pumped into her were dialed down. She was stabilizing. She had started murmuring and had nodded when
I told her that it was me, her husband and lover who was holding her hand.
Often, she would take my hand and place it against her left
cheek, and close her eyes.
She was unaware of what had transpired, and of what was
happening to her. She could not understand
the doctors, nor make sense of what the nurses asked her. She probably remembered that she had been wheeled into a large room and that strange tall men had put needles into her and one of them had wiped her chest and sternum in preparation for something brutal, and after that it was all dark for her.
Her face had darkened considerably. She had become a pale shadow of her glowing self that attracted glances and compliments in malls and in gyms and in airports. And as therapist after therapist visited her,
she was found unable to speak or stand or to drink a drop of water. But there were some rays of light through the clouds now. She was now breathing on her own, and her
heart, massively traumatized, was beating feebly but regularly, assisted by the
pacemaker.
The days passed. The swelling
of her brain was not worsening. She had started mumbling a few words. But often uttered something which was
completely oblique to what I believed and knew she meant to say.
I understood many of her expressions, but the nurses had given up on
communicating with her. The nurses were
trying hard, but they had to attend to many patients, and I was her nurse most
of the time when I was there. My wife did not know that she was in an American hospital, and continued to mumble words in Punjabi.
When I was away from her, I would call on the CVICU room phone, the nurse would hand her the handset, and as my wife listened to me telling her that I
loved her, she would mumble back in broken words. She wanted me to come back to her, and soon, as she was all alone in the strange big building and nothing made sense to her. And
I would promise, and she probably waited and waited and drifted to sleep, in
pain and in loneliness. I could only be
with her a few hours a day, due to the Covid restrictions. I was with her in my thoughts, but it was a pain almost too great to bear to be away from her when she needed me the most.
And when I was with her for the few hours during the day, she would ask me to speak to "them". She wanted to know something, but I did not know what. Did she want me to ask them to let her go home? She would try and try to tell me and finding it impossible to come up with the words, give up in sadness and in tears.
I brought her a mirror to look into. And she would hold the mirror in front of
her, unable to make sense of what she was seeing.
Was this she, the one who was complimented by strangers in
far-off lands? What had happened to her
long, flowing hair? She would look at
me, and I would attempt to brush her hair and soothe her.
But the days passed, and she remained critical. She continued to be in the CVICU for days and weeks. Her heart was unable to beat on its own, and
another surgery was planned to give her an adaptive pacemaker inside her left
shoulder.
At this point, she was in almost total surrender. She did not complain about the immense pain, about the incessant
needling, at the multiple heparin injections in her stomach, at the beeping, at
the noisy turbine in the room, at the strange sensations inside her head and in her chest, at her soiled bed sheets, … She had
no idea what was happening to her. She
was being fed through a tube, and was not in control of her bodily
functions. She was unaware that the
doctors were planning to cut her up again to implant the pacemaker. That again she would be sent into the total darkness of general anesthesia. She was often at peace.
And one day, with covid rules and time and clocks being a cognitive burden too great for her injured brain, and after waiting for interminable agonizing hours for her beloved husband to be with her as he promised her on the phone every night, unable to understand why he went away, she finally told him, through tears and unbearable pain, in words that must have come from a deep reserve of some lingering language abilities in her bleeding left-brain, that he need not come anymore, that she was now with God.
…
Faced with a calamity beyond their powers to address, the tender are strong, because they do not resist.
Their strength is in the acceptance of their fate. They place their trust in God, and often they
find that God does not answer back. But
they still trust. They will let life take
its course, and they have faith that life and the Gods will not let them drown. And if no help comes, that that is the will of God, and they will perish
in peace. When faced with an utter
inability to change their state of affairs, the ones who surrender in silence are stronger than those who flail and struggle.
(to be continued)
Chatper 3
The Five Words
It was another day and she was still in darkness. The doctors had decided to not wake her up to
give her more time to stabilize. It
would be 40 hours after she was initially put to sleep before they would try to
wean her off anesthesia. Was that
normal? They assured me it was. Her motionless body was now warm, but she was absent. Her brain was pumped with
strong strange salts to keep it from even a dream, and her fragile heart was struggling
to beat.
There was nothing to do in the hospital, and I returned
home.
My younger brother and a dear friend were with me that day,
and I was grateful for their presence.
We talked about many things and tried to take our minds away from the
clouds hovering above the home.
I woke up at 2am and looked to see if there was a message. There were two missed calls. At my home, the cellular reception is poor and calls are often dropped or not received. The voicemails said nothing. The hospital had given me access to her chart via an online tool. I logged on with her name, and saw a few strange
updates. There was much activity, and many notes. Many doctors had seen her in the middle of the night. There was no mention of her
waking up, but a note ominously mentioned that she had been taken for a scan of
her brain.
What did that mean? Wasn't it her heart that was to be healed? Why this sudden interest in her brain?
People say that the well-known three-word gesture of
affection is the sweetest sentence in the world. That night I read another sentence, only it
was five words, three adjectives and two nouns, and I hope no one ever has to read those cryptic words juxtaposed
together.
The digital letters on her hospital chart coldly said: “LARGE ACUTE COMPLETED MCA INFARCT.”
Now, at present, when I understand what they mean, I
realize that each of these words is devastating in itself, but that
taken together, these five words are catastrophic.
One wishes it isn’t large.
Or acute. Or that it is
incomplete. Or that another part of the body instead of MCA (Middle Cerebral Artery) is mentioned. Or that another
word, like occlusion, instead of infarct is used.
But those five words were there, precise, grave, unalterable. I read those words again and again.
LARGE. ACUTE. COMPLETED. MCA. INFARCT.
With trepidation, I woke up my brother and called the CVICU. My dear friend also sat silently with us as we struggled to make sense of what had happened.
It was the middle of the night. And that night would not end soon. It would stretch into days and weeks.
…
When an infant comes into the world, its eyes wander about,
unable to fixate. It does not recognize
anything, not even its mother’s face. The
infant cannot hold or turn its head. It
cannot yet eat, or speak, or understand.
But we know that it will do all those things in time.
That confidence is missing for an adult who is suddenly faced with these disabilities.
But the language of love is known to the infant, and I am
certain, to the adult.
…
As I saw her on Tuesday, and held her tiny left hand, her now-open but wandering eyes could hardly see me or recognize me, but she squeezed my hand and held it
tight, as if imploring me with all her feeble power to snatch her from the reaper who was already dragging
her into eternal darkness.
She had prayed before being taken into those nether-worlds. Had that prayer remained unheard?
I would move heaven and earth, I promised her in silence.
After a major brain stroke, the brain swells and the
neurologists worry about what they call the “mid-line-shift”. The one side of the brain that is injured, is
inflamed, and pushes sideways and down.
More than a few millimeters, and it is all over.
Her left-brain was dying and bleeding inside. The left-brain controls the right side of the body, and it contains the language faculty. A large left-brain stroke like that, and the individual may never again understand words, and may never again utter one. And of course, the right side of the face, the right arm, the right leg, all become flaccid and immobile. The right eye has trouble focusing. Her stroke symptom score was 22. It was a very, very, severe blow.
She was on the brink.
They would have to cut open her skull too, if the inflammation increased
even slightly.
…
The Harvard-trained surgeon who had mended her heart had come to visit. And he watched her, somberly, in silence. He knew and I knew, and we nodded at each
other. Some doctors are more sympathetic
than others, but in that grave moment, he remained frozen and waited for me to
say something. I had nothing to say but
I stared into his eyes. And he winced.
He would never come back to see her again.
(to be continued)
(I will be writing a series of essays on something that transpired in 2021. This is the first chapter.)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Chapter 1
The Last Supper
It was 6pm. She was all wired up and the instruments were beeping incessantly. The surgeons were gathered around the bed. The team of anesthesiologists was taking
notes. They would probably use Fentanyl, or would they use Propofol? She was overcome with fear and foreboding. As my beloved lay inclined on that bed,
trusting me with her life, I explained her condition and her history to the dispassionate
professionals. They nodded, looked at each other, and tapped on their devices. They did not look at her.
It was the time of Covid, and the room was intolerable with the noise of a large industrial "negative pressure" turbine placed in the room. I had asked, and it could not be turned off.
She was a hair’s breadth away from heart failure, and her
ashen face was resigned. After rebelling
for days against the re-opening of her body – she had had a prior open-heart surgery
ten years ago – that afternoon she had finally fallen to my reason and persuasion, as everyone told her and me that that was the only way to save her life. The hospital professionals had said that any further
delay would be “devastating”. We could not wait any longer. The surgical
teams were looking at her with disguised concern.
It was going to be very risky to cut open her heart again, but the risks of not doing so were
greater.
I was handed the surgical consent form to sign. I scribbled my signature on it. It was a quiet, cursory act. Little could anyone know then what reverberations, what thunderstorms that quiet scribble had set in motion. The die had been cast.
The tears had dried on her face. Her breath was more labored than ever. Not knowing of her critical condition, she had been served a meal at eleven, and she had taken a few nibbles. This fact was not unknown to the doctors as they were preparing for the operation. A surgical patient should have an empty stomach. But this was deemed an emergency.
The
doctors, in their worry, finally decided to give her another twelve hours. The risks were already formidable, and they balked at this additional risk. She had not had a proper meal in over a day now
– the hospital food was not palatable to her, and she had no appetite.
But as the operation was postponed to the morning, she could now eat. Theoretically, it was now allowed. But it was 8pm and the hospital kitchens had
closed.
I ran to the cafeteria to see if they had anything. They were almost closed for the day. All the "good" food was gone. All that they had was some awful looking vegetarian lasagna and packaged potato chips. I bought both. They had one piece left of a brownie cake and I bought that too.
I brought her this barely edible lukewarm "food" in the take-away Styrofoam container. I wanted her to have something, even if it was just empty calories. She did not like the lasagna at all, as it had some spinach leaves and her fear of green leafy vegetables and what they could do to her already failed mechanical heart valve overwhelmed her. I separated the spinach from the cheesy portions and made her eat a little. Seeing that she was forcing herself against her will, I offered her the brownie which she, thankfully, liked.
But she knew that I hadn’t eaten as well. And on that last evening of her lucidity,
with a mind trembling with fear and faded with exhaustion and breathlessness, she implored me to please
eat as well. I was so moved by her kindness and concern for me that I had lumps in my throat. I could not eat, I felt, even if I was hungry. But she insisted, and I shared the rest of the cake with her.
As I took a morsel of that cake, I found it indelibly delicious not because of anything in it, but because I knew that another portion of it was giving some life-energy to my wife.
I was heartbroken that I could not offer her something
better to eat at what could quite possibly be the last meal of her life. The hallways of the CVICU,
as it was called, were now darkened, and the new shift of night nurses had arrived. I was respectfully asked to leave. I told the light of my life that I would be
back before sunrise, as she was set to be sawed open at 7am the next day.
I bid her good night, and drove back home with a stone over my
heart, and broke down as I sat down in our living room. Would her eyes ever see this room again? Would her slender form ever again sit on this sofa?
…
We love the highest in another human being. The frailties, the flaws, the foibles are of
little import because our love is for that light within the other, and for the
union of that light with ours.
It is a mistake to think that love makes us weak. It is quite the opposite, I realize now. The power of love is not diminished because it includes tears and heartache. These trials and pains burnish the heart, and make it crystalline with power and strength. A man with love in his life can do things that others deem impossible. Is that weakness? Love for an idea, for justice, for a mountain peak, or for another human being, is what causes man to transcend his humanity and achieve heroism.
