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Dilip D'Souza

Wait for the Memories

I sit and watch this man. He has had trouble hearing for some years. His sight has been weak for some years too. He has never been any more than skinny; over the last year he has become positively, achingly, frail: little more than loose skin that covers his bones. He shuffles slowly from his bedroom to the dining table to the bathroom -- more stooped, I can't help feeling, every day. His speech is slurred and terribly hard to understand. In turn, he finds it difficult to hear what we say, difficult to comprehend what he does hear. His mind wanders every now and then. Conversation, his great joy, has largely dwindled to shouts and gestures.

And as if all that was not enough, he went through several days when he had the urge to visit the bathroom every few minutes. It was of little importance, but he was simply mortified by it.

I sit and watch this man, and I cannot brush away the questions that drift into my mind: what's it all for? What is this long life for if it must lead to this kind of pitiful state? What is the grand purpose towards which he must go through this indignity, this loss of sense after sense until he is walled in senselessly, without hope of escape?

At 90, he has had a long life, many friends, fond memories. Most of the friends are gone, but the memories remain. He has told us the stories of those memories many times over. But they never ceased to delight -- both us as we listened and him as he told them.

There was the time in college when they tied a goat to the teacher's desk. "One's as good as the other", they wrote on the board. The teacher, livid, demanded that the goat be removed. Nobody volunteered. Eventually, one friend offered his services, said he would bring the college gardener to do the job. Naturally, once out of the class, he used the sudden freedom granted to go off and play cricket. He was not seen in class till the next day, complete with some garbled story about how the gardener had gone to watch cricket at a nearby field, he pursued him there, one thing led to another... The goat remained, oblivious as goats are.

In their cozy neighbourhood in Girgaum, they once caught a chicken thief in the act. Seized, he had to be punished. One trusting soul vowed to administer penal action: told the thief to kneel at one end of a long lane while he walked deliberately to the other. From there, he was going to charge down the lane and deliver a running kick on the thieving, waiting, behind. Somehow, only the trusting soul was surprised when he turned around at the top of his runway to find the behind had vanished. With it, the thief.

I don't know how often I have heard these mad tales from him, the madder for being so obviously true. There were many more where those came from, each crazier than the last. He always relished the telling, the great detail, the intricate hand and face gestures he would embellish them with. Each time, we would guffaw together, wiping the tears from our eyes. And after several tales, told over an evening, his eyes would mist over and he would say quietly: "Those were such good times!" And we would know it was time to clear up the dinner paraphernalia, time to go.

But that was all before the stroke last July. In a matter of minutes, he lost his speech and the use of his right hand. Things happened too fast for us to really grasp. As calm returned, we assumed somehow, as we did after his major surgery last year, that he would be up and about soon. Even at 90. Just a matter of time, we thought. He has shown resilience and health before, why should it be any different now?

It was weeks before we realised that the story-telling was, given the great difficulty he now had in making himself understood, a thing of the past. The good health too. Like a drizzle that starts light but has soon soaked you to the bone, the little problems began. He was bleeding one morning.

Two days later, he fell heavily in his bedroom, spraining his wrist. One evening, he was utterly, frighteningly disoriented: for a while like the blueprint of his life had gone a dull, opaque grey. Another day, he could not swallow his food. And through it all, he got dismayingly thinner, weaker.

So it went. One by one, inexorably, the different parts of his body seem to be shutting down. There are occasional improvements, but they have all been determinedly temporary.

So I sit and watch him, and the questions ask themselves again. What has convinced us that "long life" is something to wish for someone? Do we live long to live like this man must today? Is his condition one that anyone could wish for anyone? Is this what life must come to? Really, and all over again, what's it all for?

Questions, more questions. The answers remain elusive, perhaps because there aren't any that satisfy, perhaps because "what's it all for?" is a question with no answers. It is not pleasant to see him decline as he has; but surely there can be no vital reason he must be this way. I tell myself: this is just one more of those things we learn, as life goes on, to find ways to accept. Nothing easy about it, yes, but nothing profound about it either.

He still remembers the stories. Sometimes, sometimes, he tries to tell us one; especially when his condition shows some improvement, as it has now, while I write this. Even if the story takes a long time, he keeps at it, repeating himself until we follow, a toothy grin spreading across his face as the tale spins on.

There's something heartbreakingly heartwarming about watching him. I sit and do just that, and I think, finally: all right, this is not what it is for, but perhaps this is where it comes to. Perhaps this is the way we must look at it. Friends, family, memories, to surround you as sunset nears. To remind you: "Those were such good times!"

Yes, all right, I can accept that.

Dilip D'Souza