time?’ he sounded reassuring.
‘I will do that,
Doctor, and what about the rest of us?’ I asked.
‘All seems fine.
Just finish the course of medication since you have started it, but I
would not think about it anymore,’ he touched his stethoscope,
growing impatient, wanting to work through the patients waiting
outside, before heading home.
At home, my predominant
state was one of relief. There was housework to be done, but with
Mary gone, there was calm and peace again. I remained private, alone
at home all day. Also, with the medical reports coming through well,
at least as regards the events of the recent months, I felt a door
shutting, a chapter closing.
It was only by evening
that I bothered getting an appointment for David to meet Dr Paul,
that too, only after a week. Till then, I would personally administer
the useless medication that had been prescribed, on all three of us.
A week down the road, a
new door opened.
Mum’s Journal, Part Two:
Acceptance
T ime, it simply moves away from us,
leaving us in a rut of petty personal tangles, forcing us to look
down, down where there is
nothing but the mundane
to toy with, while on top, things move steadily away on the waves of
time, reaching the horizon before moving out of sight, forever, never
once waiting for us to look up. For many years, my rut of worthless
entanglement imprisoned me in the shallow triviality of infidelity,
shame and sexual perversity; I was uplifted to much deeper mysteries
by the process of cell-division . Everything simply paled in
comparison.
Yes, cell-divisio n ,
something you may not have stopped to think about when you read your
level six textbook; it became the instrument that awakened me to the
meaning and passage of time. It simply made important things urgent,
relegating everything else to the ordinary.
In the end, isn’t
every story the same, built around being lost and in the search of
meaning, before finding answers to all our childish doubts?
Cell-divisio n ,
when controlled, is life-giving, kicking in at conception and working
through the growth of the foetus in the womb, till organs
differentiate, leading to a fully formed infant. In life, the process
of division repairs and runs the body efficiently, when and where
physical repair and mending is required.
However, in the lives
of cells, every once in a while, on e cell decides to
divide and pass on its quality of divisibility to its progeny,
setting in motion an uncontrollable army of dividing cells, leading
to incommodious cancers, growing in progression, just like the one
that killed David. His pertained to skin and finally blood cells,
though a cancer can appear in practically any part of the body.
An exponential
progression of rice grains, laid on the squares of a chessboard, left
kings paupers; David and I did not stand a chance.
David’s diagnosis
and treatment stretched over a few years, starting in Singapore and
ending in London, where I currently reside. He got better, before he
got worse. The fact remains that most people diagnosed with cancer
eventually die of cancer; the question is one of average lifespan
from diagnosis. In David’s case, it was less than three years.
He was brave, when he
could be, but mostly he was despondent, asking questions that have no
meaningful or pointed answers.
Why me ?
Because, me, you and anyone else are insignificant in the scheme of
life. Time, it simply moves away from us, at best forcing us to swim
with it, for a while.
Wha t now ? At best, a normal lifespan of sixty- seventy years
and at worst, a greatly diminished one, or maybe something in
between, attributable to that what we as yet do not know. Promise, in
either case, it will be a flash.
Wha t abou t m y unfulfille d duties ? You have done well, leaving enough for your family
after you are gone.
The toughest
question— I s thi s punishment , fo r the deed s tha t I hav e done ? No, your illness is not
divine justice meted out against your misdeeds,
‘I will do that,
Doctor, and what about the rest of us?’ I asked.
‘All seems fine.
Just finish the course of medication since you have started it, but I
would not think about it anymore,’ he touched his stethoscope,
growing impatient, wanting to work through the patients waiting
outside, before heading home.
At home, my predominant
state was one of relief. There was housework to be done, but with
Mary gone, there was calm and peace again. I remained private, alone
at home all day. Also, with the medical reports coming through well,
at least as regards the events of the recent months, I felt a door
shutting, a chapter closing.
It was only by evening
that I bothered getting an appointment for David to meet Dr Paul,
that too, only after a week. Till then, I would personally administer
the useless medication that had been prescribed, on all three of us.
A week down the road, a
new door opened.
Mum’s Journal, Part Two:
Acceptance
T ime, it simply moves away from us,
leaving us in a rut of petty personal tangles, forcing us to look
down, down where there is
nothing but the mundane
to toy with, while on top, things move steadily away on the waves of
time, reaching the horizon before moving out of sight, forever, never
once waiting for us to look up. For many years, my rut of worthless
entanglement imprisoned me in the shallow triviality of infidelity,
shame and sexual perversity; I was uplifted to much deeper mysteries
by the process of cell-division . Everything simply paled in
comparison.
Yes, cell-divisio n ,
something you may not have stopped to think about when you read your
level six textbook; it became the instrument that awakened me to the
meaning and passage of time. It simply made important things urgent,
relegating everything else to the ordinary.
In the end, isn’t
every story the same, built around being lost and in the search of
meaning, before finding answers to all our childish doubts?
Cell-divisio n ,
when controlled, is life-giving, kicking in at conception and working
through the growth of the foetus in the womb, till organs
differentiate, leading to a fully formed infant. In life, the process
of division repairs and runs the body efficiently, when and where
physical repair and mending is required.
However, in the lives
of cells, every once in a while, on e cell decides to
divide and pass on its quality of divisibility to its progeny,
setting in motion an uncontrollable army of dividing cells, leading
to incommodious cancers, growing in progression, just like the one
that killed David. His pertained to skin and finally blood cells,
though a cancer can appear in practically any part of the body.
An exponential
progression of rice grains, laid on the squares of a chessboard, left
kings paupers; David and I did not stand a chance.
David’s diagnosis
and treatment stretched over a few years, starting in Singapore and
ending in London, where I currently reside. He got better, before he
got worse. The fact remains that most people diagnosed with cancer
eventually die of cancer; the question is one of average lifespan
from diagnosis. In David’s case, it was less than three years.
He was brave, when he
could be, but mostly he was despondent, asking questions that have no
meaningful or pointed answers.
Why me ?
Because, me, you and anyone else are insignificant in the scheme of
life. Time, it simply moves away from us, at best forcing us to swim
with it, for a while.
Wha t now ? At best, a normal lifespan of sixty- seventy years
and at worst, a greatly diminished one, or maybe something in
between, attributable to that what we as yet do not know. Promise, in
either case, it will be a flash.
Wha t abou t m y unfulfille d duties ? You have done well, leaving enough for your family
after you are gone.
The toughest
question— I s thi s punishment , fo r the deed s tha t I hav e done ? No, your illness is not
divine justice meted out against your misdeeds,
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