LIFE
Till Death Do Us All Part
Does our meaning of life lie in taking care of each other?
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” — Desmond Tutu
My first cup of coffee brought me the news.
He had attacked her, my grandma’s sister, again, the third in less than a month. Jerking her by the shoulders and hissing at her, he’d left her frail body shaking long after the moment passed. The apartment security had to break in with his master key to check in on her muffled screams.
“He’s unrestrainable!!” the guard exclaimed, referring to the night before, as I kicked my Honda Activa on its stand. Coming barely up to my shoulders, she looks almost half my size, even when I’m less than half her age. But even I couldn’t have wriggled out of his grips.
At 74, her age defines her, melting every other aspect of her being. In her wrinkled body, with a balding head still dyed jet-black and a watchful pair of eyes heavily laden with mascara, it is hard to imagine her as any other.
The fierce young girl, who defied society to study and live independently, has disappeared into the blanket of her wrinkled skin.
“Why waste money on her schooling? She’ll need it for dowry. I’ll need it for her dowry,” challenged her brother.
“I won’t mortgage my freedom to you or any husband,” she argued. Ironically, years later, as a shrunk and shriveled old man battling cancer, he gave up his freedom to move in with her.
With nothing beyond her diploma, finding her feet in an unknown world — a man’s world, one in which she could only be someone’s daughter, sister, wife, or mother — she shoveled pennies unaided until they jiggled and clinked.
The clanking coins became notes, which became the bricks in buildings she bought around the city. She built her empire one brick at a time. And with each of them, her household swelled with people — cooks, maids, and drivers — who could all have protected her from such an attack.
Where is her entourage now, I wondered — the ones always at her beck and call? Couldn’t they have protected her? Did they disappear into her skin too? Or did they disappear with her wealth?
The freedom she pursued wasn’t devoid of consideration and responsibilities. She had earned every penny in her jar independently, without assistance or inheritance. But she considered her life, health, and intellect an inheritance. She owed every intangible blessing in life to her family, and she didn’t let herself forget it even once.
The first to move in with her was her aunt. Taking the old, childless widow into her household, she said, “She shares my mom’s blood. How can I let her suffer?” She cared for the old woman for 25 years until death tore them apart.
Losing his wife at the age of 50, her brother, the one challenging her education, rented an apartment to move in closer to her. And growing into a withered old man, he became a permanent fixture in her home until he became compost.
She let them all live with her for as long as her freedom was hers. She didn’t care for a husband or a child. She lived life on her terms.
But with every year added to her age, with every cell refusing to divide and multiply, she peeled one petal off her payroll. She sent each of them away with a share of her wealth, enough to take care of them for the rest of their lives.
Finally, when she planted herself in a much smaller and cheaper town than the city she called home, her life was not even a shadow of what it had been. The mansion in the city, with its crystal chandeliers and Italian marble, gave way to an austere apartment in an obscure building.
As I walked into her home, smelling of incense and camphor, Raga Kirwani playing the violin in the background. The previous night’s tension was palpable.
Her religious booklets were strewn around the corner of the room. Was she standing before the table when it happened, holding on to its edges as he shook her? Hissing like an injured serpent, he must have screamed, ‘Where is my dad?’
He greeted me, walking aimlessly across the room. “How do you do, Gayathri?” he muttered without stopping. Even at his peaceable moments, his imposing stature frightens me. Would I survive if he held my shoulders, crushing and shaking me?
“He’s still upset at his dad’s death.” Why is she justifying him to me?
“But it has been months! How much longer will he be?”
“Don’t be angry at him, dear. He can’t help it.”
Still in her nightgown and a cotton scarf tightly tied around her forehead, I could see she had barely slept a wink. Her migraine must have been throbbing intensely from the shock and insomnia. It might be a few more hours before she starts throwing up from the pain.
Even when I knew her response, I couldn’t help asking.
“Why wouldn’t you send him away? At your age, why would you suffer so much? He’s much bigger than you!”
“Send him away? Where to? You and I can take care of ourselves. Can he?”
“How about an infirmary? A hospital? Somewhere, but here?”
“Oh, my child! Will they take care of him the way I would? Wouldn’t your husband or parents take care of you when sick? He’s my brother’s son. With his parents gone, who does he have beside me? How can I send him away just because his brain didn’t grow with his body? Some have sickness in the body; he has that in his mind.”
“But he is not your son. He is not your responsibility, is he?!” Like a tap left open, I could no longer control my train of thought. We’ve had this conversation so many times that I knew her response before she could even think.
“Isn’t it all in the mind? What kind of monster am I if I can’t take care of my people? I’d rather lose sleep keeping him with me than by turning him out.”
“But for how long?? Can’t you see he’s unmanageable?”
“He’ll have a place with me for as long as I have one. Until death do us all part, right, dear?”
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” — Dalai Lama
It was unfathomable to me why she would waste her life taking care of someone who wasn’t her dependent. He wasn’t her parent, spouse, or child. Till death do us part only covers marital relationships was what I wanted to scream.
She was right; it’s all in our minds. But what’s not just in the mind is the reality of being attacked defenseless in the middle of the night by someone whose mind never grew beyond a single digit. Couldn’t she have chosen a hassle-free life and retired on a beach?
As always, I had a million practical questions for her. What will she do if he attacks again? Who will take care of him when she is older? Where will he go once she is gone?
In my neatly organized modern world, a solution has to be programmatic, repeatable, and reliable.
If you need family to take care of you, then you’ll be without care when the family is gone. Instead, the reliable solution would be to check in at an institution that will always have its faceless staff assist you.
This corporate mumbo-jumbo of requiring repeatable solutions to problems has seeped so deeply into my psyche that I always gravitate towards the impersonal.
But what good has practicality brought us? I wonder. Healthy taking care of the elderly and the sick was the norm in my yester-generations. Sickness didn’t discriminate between mind and body. My mom’s grandma, who, in her senile years, often ran out naked, had lived with her son’s family until her last breath.
But, even as I introspect, my youth blinds me. Being healthy and independent, I refuse to recognize or accept how dependent we all are, how we will have to support each other. This, while thriving in an individualistic lifestyle, is, to me, just a moment of introspection. One that feels unreal and doesn’t stick.
But, acknowledging the wobbly knees, the atrophied muscles, the arthritic hips, and the scarce energy of my mom, my mother-in-law, my aunts, and countless other women in my family, I know it’ll be my reality soon. I hope my individualism finds its way out long before my estrogen does.
As my grandaunt shows with her life, a family, whether it’s the one you are born with or the one you choose for yourself, takes care of each other. She might ultimately agree with Marx, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.
The great meaning and purpose of one’s life may not be so elusive after all. It may not be hidden just in the pages of religious texts, in fighting a crusade, or in solving cancer. It might just be in embracing our responsibility to one another.
“In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all its moments — which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people’s minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.” — Atul Gawande in Being Mortal
