Life is So Beautiful

Life is so beautiful…

Samata, a schoolmate and a very dear friend, recently lost her 72 year old mother-in-law to a month long, silent and comatose battle with a particularly aggressive brain tumor. Against medical advice and in the face of much protesting from friends and family, a decision was taken to put an end to her suffering. All medical intervention was brought to a halt, allowing her a peaceful passage to the world beyond.

Samata shared a truly unique, rich and close relationship with her, and I know, is grieving deeply at this loss. Amina, Priya and I, all schoolmates, called on her and her husband Rajeev, the day after the funeral. This is the outcome of the most profound condolence visit ever –

Here are two people, still reeling under the shock of having lost what was the glue in the fabric of their small family. Somehow, sitting with Rajeev and Samata that morning I felt nothing but an undeniable affirmation of the sheer beauty of life. At the end of that visit, all three of us were richer for the experience and carried in our hearts something of this wonderfully strong, fiercely independent yet enormously warm, generous and giving person who had passed on.

What came across was this – some people are blessed with, or have worked hard to cultivate, a strong divine or spiritual intelligence. Samata and Rajeev are surely such blessed souls. Their bereavement was evident, but they did not feel the need to adorn it with a dramatic angst or torment. Instead, they spoke of the month long ordeal in quiet tones and with an understanding of life and spirit that eased my soul. I felt hope well up in my heart when they spoke of struggling to put aside all conventional wisdom and think, instead, of what their mother would have wanted…..

When is the right time to accept that the body is mortal and must perish one day? What makes us hold onto our loved ones, putting them through the unspeakable horrors of surgeries, intravenous feeds and ryals tubes and ventilators? Is it just the intimidating medical fraternity? Is it friends and family who are, perhaps, telling you what they THINK you might want to hear? Is it our love for them, our fear of facing life without them, and our need for them to keep our life as unchanging as possible? Or is it our guilt…guilt at having allowed a fractured relationship to stagnate and letting small emotional injuries and bitter resentments find a home in our own hearts?

I am told there is a forum that meets in Pune every three months to discuss death and dying with dignity. I laud this effort. While this isn’t about making a case for either euthanasia or assisted suicide it is about recognizing an individual’s right to choose to die with dignity and in peace. Who dictates this choice? Is it the doctors? Or do we still have a say in the matter?

We have, as a human race become so defined and driven by the wonders of medical science that we have sadly lost a precious middle ground that connects our daily lives to our spirit. Death is the new scary bogey-man and talk of it is shunned as ill-fated and ominous. Children are shushed and reprimanded when they talk of it. But there is a time and place for it. An elderly parent needs to be able to say to his or her child “Son if I should be unlucky enough to suffer a terminal disease, I would not wish my life unreasonable prolonged by irrational medical intervention” Of course this is immediately open to all sorts of interpretation, but can we please not swing from one extreme to another? Can we please expend some effort to find a reasonable balance between giving up prematurely and persisting – foolishly, against all odds?

Being happy and Dying- these are perhaps the only two certainties in our life and the only ones that we do not prepare for… Dignity of a person, even in his or her last days is something we need to wrest from the medical community. A full, rich and well lived life is sometimes robbed of its value by the interminable suffering brought on by desperate medical intervention. What is doubly tragic is that it is oftentimes beyond the ailing persons’ control, and sometimes beyond even their knowledge. At what cost must life be sustained?

I do not mean to be morbid and neither do I mean to belittle the medical fraternity, but there is something here that we are missing ….We need to think about how we would wish to be treated, in a strictly medical sense, should we be unfortunate enough to suffer a long debilitating illness. We need to be able to speak about this frankly and without dread, to our parents, our children, our siblings and our spouses… We need to know that we do have the power to make the decision that deeply and irreversibly impacts our life and our dying.

Every person is rare and unique. Yet one grudgingly accepts that there are some who are rarer and more unique than others. Mandakini Malaviya nee Godbole was one such person. An avid bonsai cultivator, the large Malaviya Bungalow is a lush testimony to her talent and skill. She was also a kathak dancer, having trained and worked with renowned Kathak Guru, Rohini Bhate. If Rajeev and Samata were to sum up the power and the love that was Mandakini Malaviya, they would say she was the most thoughtful, considerate, bighearted, and helpful person….who always gave a one hundred percent to everything she did. And she deserved the same selfless understanding and consideration from them in those last critical hours.

Rajeev and Samata gave us something very precious that day. We need to love, respect and dignify every single person in our life while they are alive and well. That is what will give us the strength and courage to let them go with dignity and grace.

This, I believe is important.