Peace at Last: 4.7.1951 to 14.2.2010

This Valentine’s Day marks three years since Fredy’s passing. That day is as clear as crystal in my mind - in one way it is hard to believe three years have gone already, in another it seems so long ago I wonder that it is just three short years.

All’s well in my world as I board my flight in Ho Chi Minh city. It is the Chinese New Year too and I superstitiously touch the lucky coin from last night’s party. I know Jill will be at Changi and am impatient to alight in Singapore. I am past immigration when I switch on my phone and see the numerous messages - that is when I know. I see Jill behind the glass door, hug her a minute later and tell her something terrible has happened. We don’t say much, head for the small cafe and she orders tea - we both know that tea is the panacea for all things and nothing is so bad that a cup of tea won’t make it better. Now, my cup grows cold as I make the dreaded calls. I’m grateful for Jill’s presence and blessed that our friendship lets us be our real selves. It crosses my mind that we have so often been together in life’s defining moments...
 

I learn that Fredy died that morning, while I was in the sky. Kartik is on his way from Mumbai and will drive to the hills directly, Shweta will come tonight, I must go tomorrow,  two brothers will go with us and so on. I call Bianca and forbid her to make the long journey back. It is an unreal flight to Delhi. My neighbour makes pleasant chitchat till I tell him matter-of-factly why I can’t engage in conversation, ‘there is a lot going on with me, I heard an hour ago that my husband passed away’.  He is shocked into silence, as if I’ve uttered an obscenity and the quiet drone of the engines forms the backdrop for my myriad thoughts. I feel resentment and anger at his wasted life. I feel sadness at the loss of what might have been. I feel anguish for my children who have lost their dad. Above all, my heart aches for all of us in this time of sorrow.
 

Those days live in my mind as a collage of images. I remember the grey dawn after a sleepless night, as we start the journey along an oft-traveled road. I will never forget the sight of Fredy in the wooden coffin,  lying still and peaceful in his favourite blue blazer with the brass buttons. I am grateful for Kartik and his strong arm about my shoulder, we are blessed to have these perfect children. As the lid is gently closed, we are painfully conscious that we’ll never see this face again. My mind now keeps just the happy memories, through the years I knew him and of all we shared – Fredy and I and Bianca and Kartik.

Special Friends

I’ll reconnect with several dear friends in the months ahead - after two or three or four years and even after five years! With all my friends I have a context that endures because it is built on the strong foundation of time spent together and experience shared, it has been tested by the ups and downs that beset relationships. The rapport with each individual  friend is painted in a different hue – ranging from carefree morning walks on green hills or happy laughter on sunny afternoons, to sober conversations during thoughtful evenings or dark nights of heart-stopping cinema noir. With each special friend I share a cache of carefully kept memories - a birthday card, a book gifted at Christmas, a music CD from a special day -  and of course the numerous images in my mind, clearer than any picture taken with a camera.  

It strikes me how unique each relationship is and how unlike every other, just as my friends are so frequently dissimilar from one another. Each liaison is a matchless bond with its own code and characteristics, where two people carry something precious and value what they have. If one ceases to carry it because it is not valuable enough, then it can hold no worth for the other, who drops it too. I think about how people shape their associations as well as each other, how one person is a certain way because of how the other is. Perhaps this is why when one of a couple dies, the other ceases to be the person he/she was with the one who's passed away and in effect two people are gone...  

This week’s connection is with a special friend that I have known for nearly 14 years.  It is wonderful to reminisce and speak of how our lives have changed – children grown up, settled, married; careers evolved or left behind; even life goals achieved. We once shared our New Year resolutions and policed each other, promising to be accountable. We spoke about the paths we wanted to follow and where we hoped they would take us. Now we laugh over a bottle of wine, smiling over past memories, impatient to hear stories from these recent years, sharing plans for the future. We know our framework is strong and our attachments will live as long as we do!   

Flying in St. Louis

Soon after I start living in St. Louis, I visit the History museum in Forest Park and am riveted by the story of Lindbergh – aviator,  inventor, explorer. I imagine him in his fragile airplane, all alone with the sea and sky for over 30 hours, as he crosses 3600 miles of Atlantic ocean. Was he afraid or exhilarated or focused or exhausted? How did he feel in the darkness of the night, flying over the sea? What was it like to see the sun rising before him? I try to understand his words: 'The life of an aviator seemed to me ideal. It involved skill. It brought adventure. It made use of the latest developments of science. Mechanical engineers were fettered to factories and drafting boards while pilots have the freedom of wind with the expanse of sky. There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God.' – Charles A. Lindbergh, 1927

These thoughts rush though my mind, when Brian casually suggests, ‘We might fly after dinner, since the weather  is nice'. I can’t believe my ears and must seem like an idiot asking, ‘Fly? You mean in the sky?!’ Later that evening we pull up at the little airstrip, and step briefly into a small office to check on the wind and weather systems, before walking out to the small toy-like aircraft tied down at the edge of the tarmac. I look around me (and pinch myself to ensure I’m awake) as he methodically goes through a list to check things outside the plane. Then it’s time to climb inside and get strapped in, while he continues down the list of actions within the airplane. We are seated side by side, with a steering column each and a control panel in front of us. We wear headsets to communicate over the engine sound. My heart is thumping as I hear him speak with the control tower and receive permission to take off. My eyes close involuntarily as the plane rolls ever faster down the runway and there’s a hollow feeling in my middle as the wheels leave the ground.

 

I open my eyes to an incredible blue, just beyond the windshield in front of me. I can see the city laid out beneath us, slowly growing smaller. She makes a perfect picture with her familiar landmarks - Forest park, the cathedral, the down-town office towers and the unmistakeable Gateway Arch on the bank of the Mississippi. My headphones crackle, Brian is telling me I can steer in any direction I like! I see that we are steady at 3000 ft and turn the column left to follow the winding river Northwards. Soon the tension leaves my limbs, I take a deep breath and relax. It is indescribable to be so free and so unfettered, so far above the ground. Soon, the sun begins to set and lights come on in homes and on the highways. At least for the moment, it is easy to imagine one has ‘escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God’...

 

 

Balance

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with ‘balance’. Some will say it is the hallmark of an obsessive-compulsive personality but I like to think it’s the Libra in me, symbolized by the scales and big on justice, fairness and, yes, balance! As a young person, I would often say ‘that’s not fair’, assuming this was reason enough for the universe to reorganize circumstances into a state of impartiality. I grew up and learned that life is not fair and that the equilibrium I sought had to come from within.

In recent days, I have seen a disturbing lack of balance in so many lives around me. Separate conversations with different people have been uncannily similar, pointing to a trend - too much time, effort and money spent in preparing for a tenuous future that might be, at the cost of a tangible present that is. The stories tell of long hours at work and sacrificed family time, to bank more for tomorrow. How much - be it money or status or ambition - is enough? What if the future we save for dissipates when we reach there; as children grow distant, spouses become alienated and health begins to falter? As if in answer, I just met a man on the verge of retirement. He spoke about his worries around the concerns of a wife he hardly knows any more. He wishes he had shown her how he cares. He will start now…

Like other people who are past the middle of their lives, I tend to look back as much as I look ahead. While we cannot change what’s past, we can strive for stability between the present and the future. My constant effort is to remain level, centered, on an even keel, amid life’s several storms. Though I am not naturally drawn to the calm and safe and sheltered bay; invariably picking the adventure of the choppy seas and consistently choosing to venture into the new and unknown… still I will aspire for balance.

Cemeteries

I am fascinated with burial grounds. I have spent many hours walking among grave stones in old English graveyards in Himalayan hill stations, beautifully kempt churchyards in historic European towns and spread-out American cemeteries on wild, wooded countryside. Some might consider this a morbid obsession with the dead, but to me these places are the ultimate sanctuary.

Here, I can indulge my deep-rooted and abiding curiosity about what  constitutes human life and what shapes our human condition. Every tombstone tells a story and opens a door into another world, where my mind’s eye gives form to hazy lines and fills in missing colors. My imagination molds each narrative, piecing together the clues to shape each chronicle and making up the missing segments as it pleases. The Kasauli grave of a British soldier, struck down by cholera in 1818, reminds me how far he was from home and makes me wonder how his loved ones coped with his loss in a distant land. Who chose the bible passage for his epitaph? The adjoining graves of two sibling infants transports me to a time when childbirth and infancy were so much more dangerous. I imagine the heartbreak of the young parents standing on this green hillside on what must have been a sunny summer day and no doubt the sky was a brilliant azure blue…

 

And today, a freshly placed bunch of fragrant flowers and the newly lit candle on a lovingly tended grave, along with the tender epitaph, tell the tale of a man loved much. While each of us will one day succumb to our mortality, in someone’s heart we will live on.

 

 

Surgery 2

The second surgery I am privileged to see is an open heart, coronary artery bypass operation. The patient is being prepared and I can go on in. The grey haired woman, of an age my mother would have been, is already anesthetized and still. The anesthetist monitors a gauge by her head. Nurses and technicians, in their OT attire, are bustling about the room when the cardiac surgeon walks in. He sees two young nurses working with a catheter and says curtly, ‘perhaps you need to call in a couple more to help you,’ his voice dripping sarcasm. A flustered nurse mumbles an apology and finishes up. An assistant completes the surgical disinfecting and draping.

It takes pressure, power and precision to cut down the centre of the sternum with a surgical saw, but it is done in less than a minute. The two halves of the sternum are gently pried apart and held open with a brace-like retractor. We look into the chest cavity as the surgeon explains that he is cutting through the pericardium – and then I see the beating human heart! This most vital organ which begins to beat three weeks after we are conceived and continues till the end of life. From time immemorial and in every culture, the heart has been revered as the core of our being and the centre of all emotion. I have, unthinkingly, uttered the word a million times - speaking of my heart beating faster or missing a beat or being in my mouth or sinking to my feet! But I was not thinking then of this fist-sized pump, this organ composed of muscle and designed to pump blood through the living body.  
 

As the surgery progresses, the heart is isolated with clamps and devices, in preparation for a cardiopulmonary bypass. Then a machine takes over the functions of this patient’s heart and lungs; both become eerily still, for the first time since she was born. There is a brief hush in the room. In any other circumstance, this person with no heartbeat, no pulse and no breathing, would be dead… The surgeon breaks the silence. He comments on how this tireless little machine has worked unceasingly for all these years and can now have a well-deserved (though brief) rest. The still heart allows the team to do its work - steady, swift and sure - and soon it must resume its task. The tension is palpable as we wait for the still heart to start pumping blood again and when it does, first tentative - then sure, I release the breath I did not know I held.   
 

I have watched this woman receiving life, as surely as seeing the birth of a new being. I wish her well and hope her heart stays strong and sound and steady, till the end.

Surgery 1

A dark skinned man lies naked on his side, on the table in the centre of the small windowless room. His back is strangely curved, indicating a spinal deformity. Five people dressed in blue, with masks and caps and only eyes exposed, go about their tasks at various stations. They seem oblivious to this body, which is still and bent and unconscious. I see all this through a glass pane in the door, which lets me look into a different world that few are allowed to view.

I am in the pre-surgery area of a busy hospital, here to witness two major surgeries - a spinal procedure and a heart bypass operation. The orthopedic surgeon has scrubbed his hands for 10 minutes and now invites me to enter the operation theatre with him. The room is very cold and the smell of disinfectant is overpowering. Soon the second surgeon walks in and it is unreal to hear them greet each other in what must, for them, be an everyday environment. One comments on the music that is playing, ribbing the other about his preference for romantic melodies. The anesthetist arranges for me to stand on a small stool, for a better view. He explains that he must keep this patient under: not too long, not too short, not too deep and not too shallow…

By now the man is draped in green sheets and only a square patch of his skin is exposed, painted thoroughly with a pungent yellow solution. It strikes me that they approach this square patch as a work station, perhaps they need to forget there is a living breathing man beneath the drapes. The surgeon explains that this spine, which has been bent for over 30 years, will not be straightened with this surgery. But the excruciating pain from pressure on nerve-endings, that now keeps this man bed-ridden, will be gone and let him walk again. The hand that cuts the skin is steady (we have all heard speak of surgical precision) and the edges are cauterized immediately to stem the bleeding. The burning skin emits a nauseating smell.

So many thoughts pass through my mind during the next two hours… The instruments and implants are not dissimilar to a carpenter’s tools - hammers, screws, saws, pliers. It must take tremendous strength, focus and endurance to do this work. How fragile the human body is, where the smallest damage to narrow thread-like nerves can result in unspeakable outcomes. How strong the human body is, where this intervention and even the introduction of foreign implants will be accepted - bones will join, blood will coagulate, skin will heal. This man was not known to me and he will never be known to me, yet I have seen him in a way that is more than intimate. I have seen the spine that is linked to his brain, I have seen the lungs that inhale and exhale his breath. I don’t know about him, but I am changed forever.