Even in a village like ours, these days it is hard to find
middle-aged or elderly people with grey hair. Pretty much everyone dye their
hair jet black. For a few decades now, this has been the norm in cities. Acceptance of the natural process of aging is
fast getting obliterated. When we fail to accept our own aging, we are likely
to fail to accept the aging of our loved ones. We are likely to hold on to people who
should have long been gone. To elaborate on this, I would like to bring up a
personal example.
For several years, Dev’s dad (papa) was severely diabetic.
When he was over 70, he was diagnosed of (advanced stage) Parkinson’s. Later he broke his pelvis which restricted his
movement further. Being far away in California, we felt that the only help we
could extend was to employ a caregiver. This lessened the burden on Dev’s mom
during the day. She still had to care for papa in the night. This was
slowly taking a toll on her health, since she couldn’t ever get a good night’s
sleep.
When we moved to India in 2012, we stayed with Dev’s parents.
That was when we realized the futility
behind what was happening there. Papa’s life was being extended by
prolonging his dying.
His face was absolutely expressionless. He had very little flesh on his bones. He could hardly move, eat or
talk. He needed assistance with everything. We could smell the decaying bed sores.
This left us wondering about life, “What’s all this medical
care for? For keeping a dying man in bed a bit longer? How do poor people deal with such situations?” Also we strongly felt the
need to reassess the situation by looking at it from papa’s perspective.
We initiated a conversation with Dev’s mom to understand
what was keeping her going. We came to know that she was not given the full
picture of papa’s illness. She didn’t really know how bleak the
situation was. We slowly and carefully divulged the medical info that we had access
to. We wanted to gradually decrease all the medicines except pain killers. After an
initial period of resistance and reluctance, she followed through.
I wanted to focus on helping papa be happy – however
short-lived that was for. I used to sit by his side, sing to him, and once in a
while feed him some ice-cream (his absolute favourite). During one such
feeding he hurriedly said “Quick! Quick!” and tears started rolling down his
sunken cheeks. After a few weeks papa had a brain hemorrhage and was
taken to the hospital. He was in coma. Again, we had to make the difficult
decision of bringing him home and not prolong his stay in the hospital.
At home papa was hooked up to an
oxygen cylinder. In a few days, with some of us next to him he passed away.
I see certain aspects of this narrative getting repeated in
so many cases, among our friends and relatives. I see people wanting to hang on
to the lives of dying ones too dearly. Our modern culture lacks mindfulness of
death. Tibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, focuses a
great deal on death.
Here is an interesting article on "Death and dying in Tibetan Buddhism" from Frontline, PBS.
-- Hema
