Last weekend, I spent time with my favorite guitar store owners.
Michael and Kayla (names changed for privacy) are a wonderful couple. Their count of shared interests and life philosophies might leave even the most conjoined partners with envy.
I visited them after three months with a box of Jalebi. I was meaning to share the joy during the celebratory Diwali week in October, but somehow, plans fell off the wayside.
As we got to talking, Kayla asked about my family, especially the health of my ailing father and grandmother.
Just before I embarked for Canada about three months back, my 90-year-old grandma’s legs gave out in the middle of her 10-step waddle from the kitchen to the living room, leaving her pelvic bone to gravity’s mercy.
She is still bedridden, with my parents doing everything in their physical power to cleanse her every day, including the messy effluence. It pulls greatly on my emotional handles to witness the most independent lady I have known suffering at her age.
But, the realization of my weak resolve to leave my promising career behind in support of my family gives me grief. My mother is in her mid-sixties, and my even older father’s pancreas sports a benign tumor. They need help today more than ever before.
However, I worry that my sacrifice would only render most of theirs futile, their dream to provide both kids with a better standard of living broken and unfulfilled. It is also why my parents always just “wasp away” my request to return home.
I told Kayla that my grandmother’s situation was dire, reeking of death some days, only to get “better” with complete immobility and pain.
She mentioned that her mother-in-law was also in her nineties and could barely manage her day-to-day chores. We both agreed that the recent medical progress was indeed a deal with the devil, allowing humans to cheat death at the cost of living on absolute dregs of life quality.
I spoke to my father a day before visiting the store. He mentioned how gradually mobilizing his mother from the bedroom to the living room provided a unique purpose in his life.
My dad reminded me of Victor Frankl, his existentialist philosophies, and the latter quoting Nietzsche— “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Kayla was with joy when she heard that my father, though ailing himself, had started to find strength in his limbs. “Certainly, a silver lining circumscribing an overcast sky,” she said.
She also mentioned how my family was lucky to deal with a benign pancreatic tumor instead of a malignant one; the latter would have been a priority package to the other side with an ETA of four grueling months.
My father’s tumor (well, about 90% of it) was removed successfully in 2009. He was granted odds of 85% mortality and 15% morbidity. For those weak in math like me, this meant my father would never be “okay,” either dead or severely ailing.
This was my first crossroads in life, where my memoir’s chapter would end with, “And thus, the boy was forced to become a man.” I was 13 at the time.
The aftermath of this surgery would be riddled with physical and psychological torment. Chronic excruciating pain would ensue in the coming years, with some lasting a couple of weeks. The other days would also not be spared to an extent where I would stop asking my dad how he was.
Since his pancreas was constantly firing off-beat, he was either hypoglycemic enough to make him lose consciousness, or hyperglycemic, where large areas of his body would be filled with pus.
I remember arriving home after an important exam, only to find mom adding finishing touches to a lined-up surgical arsenal, the opposite of a dinner table’s celebratory feast.
She was waiting for me to hold my dad’s left leg. At the base of his foot was a circular area of yellow pus, almost as large as someone’s palm.
She needed to carve and drain the pus out of the leg ASAP since this was the beginning of it becoming gangrenous.
Ironically, my father distrusted hospitals because he believed they were either short of qualified professionals or would charge a premium for helpless patients. Instead, he would compel my mother to do full-fledged surgeries.
Only this time, we were laughably short on labor, so I had to step in. I’m not squeamish at the sight of blood, but my father’s puss-filled foot was another story. It reeked harder than my brother’s fart bee-lined towards my face. My father squirming in pain was eating into what little resolve I had.
As I held his foot, my mom’s unwavering grip on the scalpel carved into it, and a loud wail of anguish spread across the room. Passersby outside would have probably surmised we were the unfriendly neighborhood psychopaths dissecting a live human specimen.
It took a total of 10 minutes for mom to finish, while taking the occasional breaks to let my dad catch his breath. At the surgery’s conclusion, his tear glands had dried up while mine were just beginning to well.
Why didn’t she use an anesthetic? Maybe my dad’s strong reluctance to visit the hospital halted any reasoning with him. Perhaps he just wanted to “get done with it” by consuming the least resources. Or maybe, it was because mom was a physician, not an anesthetist. Either way, mom’s opposition fell on deaf ears.
She suspected that such a remarkable, but stupidly stubborn and distrusting nature of my father was a by-product of his pancreatic disorder. The constant sugar fluctuations were gradually killing the neurons in his brain. She was probably right. The quite qualified surgeon she married would never have made such a move otherwise.
This was just a short excerpt from the long thesis of my dad’s “physical” malady. But what about the mental? This included my father letting me know, in no uncertain terms, of my financial liability to him. My constant struggle to prove my worthiness was futile in the presence of his chronically depressed mental stature. Slowly but steadily, it sapped my self-esteem away as well.
As Kayla remarked on the silver lining in my father’s survival, I struggled to agree with her. Would he have been better off dead? If not for him, for us?
Values of honor, pride, worth, self-esteem, and elevated morals collapsed like dominos in quick succession. My towering role model, my old man, was now a minnow scurrying about in the deepest trenches of the gutter. I was constantly forced to face guilt in my regret that the operating surgeon’s hand did not dip a millimeter below target. One stroke to the pancreas and my father would have ended dead on the table, or a vegetable deemed unworthy of life in the face of suffering.
Just because he had preserved much of his active faculties, do we consider that a life worth living? Isn’t there a cost for collateral damage?
But sliding down the slippery slope of assigning accountabilities, at what stage do we stop? Aren’t my father’s actions only a by-product of his expected neuronal damage, the 15% morbidity belt he was forced to wear?
As I embarked on my journey to the US for my master’s, I came across my second crossroad. This was when I was forced to witness peers my age who hadn’t come across a shred of pain measurable by my yard scale, but academically outperformed me.
They would enjoy close friendships, potluck dinners, bars, and coffee houses, while I’d spend my time grinding out the next assignment. All because of my father’s belief that my failure was more painful than death, and to avoid it, I’d need to persevere every single moment.
One mandatory undergraduate-level course would prove to be the quicksand that would cast me into the depths of depression. The more I struggled, the less I grasped the content.
Long story short, I scored an A but lost a massive 20-30lbs in the process. I barely ate a meal most days, and only my mother’s sleepless nights in Mumbai helped me climb out of the gaping hole. I cannot thank her enough for that.
I can find hardly anyone who would endure the pain she embraced. Her husband’s, her ailing parents’, and even her sons’.
My conversation with Kayla was enriched by Michael and his views on caring for older parents. His mother was also dysfunctional, an addict who pushed him out to fend for himself when he was barely 14. He joined a hippie music group while engaging in odd jobs for a living.
We left the shop for dinner at an Indian restaurant. I could glimpse visible tears in his eyes as he gouged on the palak paneer dosa. Kayla would mention that he “inhaled” his meal, for he knew its value. She recalled an incident many years back when his friend gave him a peanut butter toast, and he remarked with teary eyes that it was the best meal he’s ever had.
Michael mentioned that alongside guitar, he also trained in martial arts, specifically in the ways of Kung Fu. A fundamental challenge in this activity was not in the body, but in mind.
An expert in Kung Fu could take down much larger opponents by simply using their larger stature against him. Gravity may be the weakest force in physics, but it is plenty powerful to neutralize physically intimidating people.
He said that the philosophies of Lao Tzu were the cure for his misery. According to the philosopher, the entire world is one unified life force and an imbalance on one end would be neutralized to regain balance. So, if someone tried to be selfish and greedy, the world’s life force would re-arrange itself to ensure the same self-serving tendencies would be their or their progeny’s undoing.
So, I started wondering what differentiates mom (or Michael and Kayla) from all the people I meet on a daily basis. Almost a hundred percent of those, even decades older than me, haven’t witnessed hospice care or even perpetual disability.
Some have come across death, but they still revert to the old teenage ways. I guess, a momentary termination of life helps learn about loss, but not pain. I never glimpse someone hoping to live fully for others, only of themselves perpetually seeking to revel in every moment. They intend to solve Camus’ “Problem of Absurdity” with Carpe diem.
Part of the training in disabled care is to embrace hopelessness in the face of perpetual sickness and eventual death. It is hard to theorize but even harder to empathize with.
Only in the presence of a miserable loved one and our backs against the wall can we hope to elevate ourselves from the clutches of hedonistic living. As my mom once said, “When there is no easy path, pick one of the hard ones.”
But, I can understand if you commented — “Well, couldn’t you just abandon the hardship? Aren’t these statements of “in sickness and suffering” just erudite eastern religious mumbo-jumbo that you can buy off-the-shelf tax-free for $4.99? Hedonistic living? Gimme a break! Isn’t it happiness that makes life worth living? If suffering in life is certain, why dip down into it even more? Wouldn’t denying it in the present give us more meaning in life? Why is it wrong to consume the blue pill?”
I don’t have answers to these fundamentally important questions. But, what I do know is even though happiness is subjective, fulfillment is not. There is a reason that as we get older, we become nostalgic about our footprints in the sands of time rather than glance skywards towards the future. We may all embrace death, but never disability. It is hard to find honor in letting your attendant clean your bum thrice a day.
But, to embrace perpetual illness and disability as a testament to being alive is something that needs experience and a lot of practice. How do we find our utility when parts of us are stealing it away? Only through helping others through their odyssey can we find our egos bowing down towards kindness.
Dating apps are filled with erotic Janes, many aged 30+, barely donning anything, flaunting their mommalian glands to grab themselves a tall glass of hunky Tarzan.
Great.
Pray, tell me, what will happen to your relationship when Wonka’s willie begins to get a little wonky? The same goes for your body when it fails to make the cut for someone else.
How do you deal with your parents passing away? Or worse, becoming disabled for life? How about siblings? To push it further, how about your kids?
I have never met anyone who hadn’t found fulfillment after dealing with the pain of caring for the sick. My last crossroads came a few years back after a close friend bid me goodbye. The work I put on myself has left me far more fulfilled and satisfied than anyone I know. This is because the more tragedies I encounter, the better the person I become. I had been battle-hardened since I was a teenager.
Yes, I feel lonely sometimes because I find it hard to connect with the experientially stunted wavelengths of most I encounter. But knowing that life only gets more involved from here on out is something I look forward to. This is where the contrast begins to show.
You may pop dead tomorrow, but you will more likely witness the deaths of several around you, many suffering tragically while they are at it.
But, to cope with situations like these, we all need to care for our elderly, the weak, the hopelessly disabled, and the dying.
It isn’t easy, but it is rewarding. If you are spiritual, it is undoubtedly nourishing.
I’ll let my friend, Victor Frankl, scribe the message better than I ever could-
“In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
…and to learn to sacrifice, we all shall.