My grandmother almost passed away today...She is about 94 and is bed-ridden. She has to be washed, feed and kept clean by us. But however she ate well and never showed any signs of uneasiness until evening, when she had a tasty cup of tea and went on to an evening slumber.
As amma moved across the room to clean the bathroom, the till-then peacefully sleeping grandmother suddenly was tossing and turning in her bed. Sound was not coming out of her throat and she was trying to inhale with difficulty...Her eyes began to reel and face turned pale. All uncles, aunties and close neighbours were called in. We wiped her face with water and gave her some tender coconut water to drink. She gulped only a few spoons of it. Her body began to feel ice cold and hands were stiff.
She began to produce strange sounds and with her till- then-numb hands pointed to one direction as if she saw someone calling her from that point. We all turned our heads to see who was there, but found none. Old folk gathered there, who had seen many deaths, said: "It's almost over. Pray for her soul. Inform the relatives..."
My mother and me began to cry aloud...me calling out involuntarily 'Achammeee' at the top of my voice.
Suddenly an old chechi held my hand.
She told me:
" Don't call her aloud...The soul can't go then...Don't cry or make any noise, it will intimidate the soul from ascending to heaven. Please don't stop her...Let her get a peaceful death".
But the pressure of the situation and the tremor in the pit of my stomach, gave me away...As I wailed, her voices stopped, she turned her face to respond to our sound, her eyes became normal... Gradually the harsh uneasy breathing also returned to normalcy; body became warm again. She slowly got back to a peaceful sleep with regular rhythms of heartbeat.Things came back to what was before and the crowd around her dispersed one by one...
In the moments of her discomfort, I had fixed in mind, that we are going to lose her. She is ending up her ties with this earthly life. No more are we relatives. She is going to be just a soul, free frm the tangles of her sensual body...She is being liberated from the material life and is exalted to the divine sphere. She would soon be judged in the divine space equating her good and bad deeds in the weighing scale of justice.
What is Life and death? It is a conundrum...an all time wonder ...How ephemeral is the life we live...All ends, the very momnt breathe goes out of our body. How much do we boast about our skills and adventures and melt in the euphoria of our glories...forgetting the imminent, inevitable death...
Mm...
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