Saturday, October 19, 2019

Dyeing & Dying


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