The Death
I have never seen death more close, than just recently last week when I think my outlook towards life has totally changed.
So I have been staying as a paying guest with an old Sindhi 76year old lady, widowed an year back. She had three daughters, married and busy in their own lives in three different cities. Having no source of income and very alone and depressed, she had me stay at their place.
We had a love and hate relationship where she would have issues with me pasting stickers on the windows or keep clothes scattered over the bed while she would cry to me about how she missed her loving husband or share her other family problems with me or narrate family issues and other stories to me. Many times, I had to bring her out of depression of her husbands loss by hugging her and giving her a lot of reasons to live and be strong. Yes, she had held my hand and said "will you leave me after your done with your work here ?" And she would tell me, "I have three daughters, and you are my fourth".
In two months, we fairly got attached as humans.
One misfortunate day, she attempted some labour at home when she was alone and had a backache. I applied medicines to her back and got few medicines for her but her pain was not subsiding. She went to a doctor who diagnosed her of fracture and soon, a cascade of medical illnesses took over her when she was admitted in ICU for half a month, after which, she left this world.
I was probably not expecting this sudden news of her death and it took time for me to let this news sink in.
They brought her body home the next day afternoon. The two daughters and their family, along with their dogs were present. The third, being in Dubai, did not turn up soon. Although she was on Skype call where they showed her the body on Skype call and a few tears from the ladies followed.
The cremation took place, after which things got very light. The family was giggling and laughing over the dogs cuteness and playfulness. There was a lot more chitchatting and gossiping about random things and a lot of loud laughter which I could hear in my room. There was vada Pav parcels and huge parcels from Kayani bakery, idli Wada, nice tomato gravy cooking in the house. Kilos of mangos were bought. People were getting together, chilling at the terrace, the dogs were mostly the centre of attraction. The weekend was well spent.
As the weekend passed, the working people went back to work and the two daughters started collecting the money, valuables, going to the bank, property transfers, meeting the lawyers, etc. There were arguments about the money not being divided by their mother and some more arguments.
The third daughter, from Dubai, did not want to miss out on any of this, flew down soon enough.
The woman, who was the inheritance of this particular house, started cleaning the house, getting the leaking pipes fixed, the lights fixed and broken mirrors, cupboards fixed, getting rid of the old woman's clothes.
Today, it's 5 days since the old lady's death.
Is this what is death all about ?
Is this what being old really means ?
Is this all that a "mother" means to people ?
All this while, I've been sitting in my room introspecting about life, and it was much better that the old woman went back to her loving husband instead of staying in this mean, selfish, evil world all alone.
