A man sharing a picture of his grandfather enjoying a last drink with his sons in Wisconsin has gone viral on Twitter. Well, I saw it on news websites since I am not on Twitter. Yes. You read it right. I am not on Twitter. And, I have not committed a crime! Sorry for digressing. This gesture of the sons sportingly sharing a beer moment with their father in the hospital room, all looking happy to have fulfilled what looked like the old man’s last wish, was heart-warming. The man died a day later. But at least he lived till then, and after, in his sons’ heart. The sons will remember him more for this last party than the death that took their father away from them — forever.
This got me thinking. How many of us would ever be able to fulfil a wish like this of a family member? Are we a serious bunch, especially when someone we love is pushed into the zone of illness? We are constantly worried about how to keep him/her alive longer. I doubt whether we would ever have the guts to smuggle a cola, forget beer into the hospital. Subconsciously, we tend to make a terminally ill patient feel, well, terminally ill. Agreed, death is a rude reminder of life. But does that mean we “wait for life to end” rather than let them “live till the end”? Is it a crime to let the dying person eat and drink what he/she feels like? I understand it may fast-forward the end by a few days, a few hours. But then, is it worth denying a dying person, who is yearning for that ‘treat’?
My appa was very fond of salted cashew nuts. He was highly diabetic and had a pressure-reading that almost always hit the roof. So cashews, and salted cashews at that, were poison for him. I once found him happily chomping the forbidden nuts, and was quick to point out how lethal it was for him.
He was first upset, but that emotion metamorphosed into a seething anger with a vitriolic spray of words: “I am going to die without enjoying good things in life.” I was helpless because I did not want him to suffer more, or worse lose him soon. But I did lose him, and soon enough. He succumbed to cerebral hemorrhage a few weeks later. I feel guilty of having denied him that small bowl of joy that he would have savoured.
I continue to say sorry to him…by having completely given up on cashews, and that includes Feni!
(The writer is the author of ‘My Iron Wings’)