Closure: DL # 8517 - Atlanta to Paris

The plane is in the sky over the Atlantic and it is dark. I expect the sun is beginning to rise at my Paris destination. Unbidden, my mind takes me down a scary pathway and opens doors long shut…

Friends expressed surprise that I coped so well with the loss of both parents within a year. On the last day dad was conscious, I traveled to Mumbai and attended a meeting. No one knew it was his last day, but I did not even want to consider that it might be. I thought acting normal would actually make everything normal (I yelled at my doctor brother for suggesting dad may not pull through this) and when I saw him next, he did not recognize me… I received the 4am call. The phone showed ‘hospital’ and, at first, I let it ring. I knew what they wanted to tell me. I called mom and heard myself stammering because I had no words. Till I die I’ll remember her response – a cry like an animal in pain, and then nothing. I stayed with her the next two days, but left soon after to avoid the mourning rituals. 

Something was extinguished inside my mom and she was in hospital a year later. Well before they detected her lung infection she said she felt breathless, but the monitors still looked good. One night, soon after I left her, I had a call saying she was asking for me. The image of how she looked that night remains with me: frail and beautiful in her blue hospital gown, prominent cheekbones, her large expressive eyes somewhat perplexed… I stayed with her a long while and it was very quiet, past midnight in the ICU. Being mom she asked me to comb her hair and commented on how my blouse did not exactly match my sari! After some time she told me to go home as it was late and she would worry. ‘Go, get some sleep.’ I laughed and said, as if to a child, ‘What’s the point, you might call me back again’ and she said, ‘No, I won’t call you back’. Did I perhaps tell her that her need for me was an imposition? They put her on the ventilator soon after and she never spoke again. 

The next day is a collage of images: the ICU room where they had erased all trace of her, a nurse handing me her diamond nose-pin in a plastic pouch, my shock at how cold she felt and how unlike mom she looked. I was filled with a sense of déjà vu and it was like the previous year. Even the air had the same beginning-of-winter chill, but this time it was a relief to not face mom’s unbearable grief or try to share with her the little comfort I had left.  

Now, years later, I am agonizingly engulfed with the sadness and the loss. I am the only one awake on this plane. It is peaceful and quiet, except for the comforting drone of the engine. I’m warm and cocooned in my seat and, oddly, feel safer than anyone should feel in the sky. Perhaps I am invulnerable because the worst has happened – what else can come to pass?