From the vortex of grief: So the darkness shall be the light

 My dad has been sick for one and a half years now. That amount of time has given me a sense of acceptance of the situation, no matter how horrifying the reality. On my many visits home in this span of time, I saw my Mom look more and more haggard due to the grueling regimen of her clinic, caregiving and household chores. I would despair seeing her, and worry more about her health too. But there was one presence in that house that always gave me some hope. My 93-year-old grandpa. Not that his life had been very pleasant. He had seen his fair share of deaths over the years - a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, most of his cousins and peers. He had grieved deeply over these, no doubt. Similarly, he had many many health woes - diabetes and high blood pressure for 40 years, heart problems for 50, cataracts in both eyes, loss of vision and hearing, multiple hospitalizations and surgeries. But there was this zest for life that he embodied that never ceased to dim even after all these ordeals. He remained a happy and cheerful person, sometimes proclaiming that he would live to 108 years of age, and all of us almost believed it. He was intensely curious and interested in the happenings of my life, and his memory and perfect recall would many a time astound me.

But a couple of months back, he had a fall. We had him checked out and an x-ray taken, but beyond that we did not worry too much. All of us presumed that he would recover miraculously, as he always did. A week after that, his appetite came down drastically, and he was hospitalized for a couple of weeks. We were told that his kidneys were failing. He underwent 2 rounds of dialysis, and was sent home after a month. Within a week, he developed severe breathing issues. Another round of hospitalizations, and we were told that one lung had completely failed. He was kept on continuous oxygen, and was sent home after an excruciating month. After this very drastic turn of events, he returned home unrecognizable. From being perfectly capable of managing his daily activities, he became bedridden, dependent on another person for everything. From being a sunny and pleasant-tempered person, he threw tantrums at every mealtime, refusing to eat. From having perfect memory and recall, he became disoriented and confused, waking up in the middle of the night and asking for breakfast.

The last time I had visited him was when I had come back from Rome, and he was very curious, and wanted to know all the details of my trip. I was visiting my parents to help out with some chores, and I was extremely frenzied and had a hundred other things to finish in that extremely short period. I gave my grandfather curt answers, promising to return another day and tell him everything. That day came a month later, and by then, the grandfather I had was not the grandfather I have known for 25 years. He had no questions, and only smiled at me vaguely. I felt like I had lost yet another person who had been a part of my close family and a strong supporter of mine that day. He is still alive, and I hope that he would recover, but that feeling of dread that I've come to know so well has settled in my heart. How can someone be so utterly fine one moment and then be reduced to this? I have no answer to this haunting question except the exceeding frailty and beauty of life. This is how it is.

And thus, I find myself thrown in at the deep end of life yet again. It was hard enough with one sick person; two are unbearable, especially given that I'm doing a PhD. I wonder how my mother stays sane - a sick father and husband, a job to do, a house to run. But as horrifying and impossible as it seems, this is our life now, and I find comfort in small things. A sunrise, a walk, lines from T.S Eliot's poems.