Nani

On Saturday, my nani left her body. It was a strange feeling, standing in the ICU, watching the doctors trying to revive her body. It was peaceful to sit with her body and tell her one last time how much she meant to us. It was impossible to talk to anyone at that time, though. It was extremely disorienting to leave my nani's side and find such a large number of people assembled at the hospital within the hour. It was bewildering to have so many different versions of what we could and could not do over the next few days. It was distressing to have to accept that mom and masi wouldn't be able to see nani one last time before the cremation. It was infuriating that someone who didn't care two hoots about nani should get to bathe her and help dress her the next day, when the people who did so much for her while she was alive, out of love, weren't able to.

But whatever I felt over the last few days, I didn't find my eyes filling with tears everytime the many, many people who visited spoke about her, or about the things she'd done, or the wonderful person she was. I didn't feel particularly emotional even when they kept remembering how she used to name me as her daughter even when she'd forgotten the names of her own children. When we discuss the many aspects that made nani what she was, it makes me happy, and gives a warm feeling inside, not a feeling of loss.

When people call up or visit, and remembering her, start recounting stories of what she'd done for them years ago, or how she'd fed them, or taken care of them, I remember her as she was, some ten years ago.. vibrant, caring, enthusiastic, she loved gardening, she'd just learnt how to drive, she let us experiment in her kitchen, listened to our stories, she was just the most perfect grandmother anyone could ever have asked for!

But that was not the nani that we'd been taking care of, for the last two or three years. Ever since she was diagnosed with cancer, she had slowly, almost imperceptibly lost that verve and individuality, gradually turning inwards, and by the time chemo and radiotherapy killed the cancer, her body was ravaged and the pain she had to endure wrought lasting changes. By the time we realised that all was not well, she was in a bad state.

Alzheimer's disease had robbed her of most of her memories, and she was desperately afraid and distrustful. In this darkness, she still recognised us as somehow related to her, though she didn't quite know how.. and now she lost interest in most things that had earlier defined her. Her famed hospitality and warmth were replaced by suspicion and a childlike fear. The early days, when she couldn't find her way to the bathroom at night, and would sit and cry like a baby, the hallucinations, the increased aggression later, when almost the only coherent thought that she had was that she had to go home, to her father and the family of her youth, the pain that she had to endure throughout, as her body too began to give up.. these are the things that defined her last years.

But what I remember most clearly of my nani is the love I felt for her, the tenderness, the feeling that made me want to just put my head in her lap and feel her stroking my hair, the satisfaction on her face when we'd talk and instead of trying to make her realise that she was rambling, I'd answer in ways that she could still comprehend, the way she would smile when I'd go over to visit her, the way she'd still put on her spectacles and read with intense concentration the same line over and over again.

Most people are now grieving for the nani of some eight or ten years ago. But the last few years she had changed into nani the baby, who had nonetheless to live with a lot of physical and mental pain. I can't grieve, because she's finally free of the pain, she is finally through with this extremely difficult life, and I can't grieve, because I saw her at the last, looking as though peacefully asleep. Arjun, though so young, put it so well when he told masi not to feel too sad, because nani had, afterall, become an angel now.