This morning i got my death sentence.
The crime began 7 months ago, Some cells in my body got naughty and grew into a tumor. That tumor like a mafia, kept growing until it was deeply rooted into every organ of my body. But the doctors told us that the war wasn't lost still, giving my stubborn parents a reason to go on, and more annoyingly urging me to go on along with them. I mean you get tired, with the chemicals that make you lose hair and make you feel sick and ugly like a century-old man. I got tired everytime after an extensive therapy session, but the gleam in my parents eye, the layer of tears in their eyes which tear apart your heart and emotionally blackmail you into about everything , urged me to go on. It was today that this gleam went away.
It was today that the tears didn't have to be hidden anymore. The doctor told us that the tumor had made it to my brain , apparently into a cavity at the back of my head called fourth ventricle which was inoperable . A surgery at this stage would only cause me pain and perhaps prolong my stay in this world by a month at best, but the cancer cells will eventually raise their head, which is to say in medical terms, metastasise again.
For the first time in a long period, I assumed an adamant tone, making it clear to everyone that i didn't want a surgery. The war, in short was lost. and i did not want the remaining bits of it to be waged on my body which was already in a lot of pain.
Once the finality of my tone sank in, everyone cried so much that i am sure they would have gotten themselves dehydrated had they gone on for another hour. They cried till they were exhausted. Then My father went to get some pain-numbing medicines for me and my mother went home to make me my favourite soup. My sisters and brother were there to look after me but something just occurred to them in middle of the evening and all of them went away one by one. Leaving the maid behind, and i, in my comfortable little bed. (Not so little now that i have shrunk up in size)
For the first time in a long period, I was thankful for loneliness. At least for the first ten minutes but then the reality of the news began to dawn upon me. I was going to die. My best and the only remaining shot at life was a week, or a month according to my doctors.
All the dreams i had dreamt , all the people i had loved, i was going to leave them all behind. And the worst part was that being a strictly non-religious person, i didn't know what awaited me there. Or if anything awaited at all?
The uncertainty was so maddening that i pulled my hair in fists. I felt like a dark monster will grab me from behind any moment, hiding me in its cloak where it will be just an eerie darkness and no sound at all. This is how i had envisioned death in childhood. But now that it wasn't just a word in a storybook but my fate to be, it was all the more scary.
I sat huddled up in my blanket trying to swallow my tears .All of a sudden i felt so helpless that i started crying. Crying like i had never cried before. Crying until my tears dried up and all that remained was a choking feeling in my throat, the painful constriction which feels like a lump of tears and makes you unable to speak.
The maid tried to comfort me but i asked her to just let me be. I knew i had to be strong still AS soon as my family came back. Ironically, I had to support my family through their pre-grief period until i became the reason for their grief. I was going to die, but i had to mentally prepare them for what was killing me (literally) . I had to smile and tell them it was ok. It was ok to die . Though i don't believe in it. Though it scares me . Though the thought of death chills me to my bone, i cannot admit it in front of my family because it's not like me to be weak. I am the one who is looked up to for support and rationality of thoughts, i could not accept something as irrational as fear, no matter what the circumstances were. No matter how the word 'death' scared me a hundred times more than the monster in cloak had scared me back in childhood..
A storm of emotions that blow you off your feet after initial numbness in an unexpected situation had thrown me into centre of a whirlpool. My life ran before my eyes. Faces swam in my head one by one. Some of them i loved. Some of them i hated, Some of them hurt me, and some of them i had hurt. But there was just one of them with whom i hadn't experienced a connection of any kind. I had only seen him every day of my life, talked on occasions where talking had to be done. And never smiled. Never going beyond the bounds of faint recognition.
Though in my private thoughts, i had enjoyed the liberty of brooding upon him. In quiet hours before i got sick , i used to think about how things would be, if either of us perked up the courage to be with the other. Would it be amazing? or would it be disappointing? Would it fulfill my fantasy or shatter the dream world i was living in? I oscillated between decisions of talking to him about it and just forgetting about it altogether. I was not even sure he liked me, or if he did, did he like me enough in that way? Though i am a pessimist by nature and naturally my first inclination was that he didn't like me to start with, a stubborn part of me insisted that sif i knew anything, i would believe that even if our best dreams were mutual, meither of us would ever admit that. A big share of my time was spent thinking about it ( Now that i think of it, i wish i had done something more useful , gone to a beautiful place, done some social work maybe). And then i got cancer. And cancer puts an end to normal functioning of human mind. The teenage thoughts of love and fantasies are replaced by fear of the next chemothearpy session. Instead of thinking about which dress to wear, you face the task of choosing the most natural-looking wig to wear. Cancer, i am telling you , has worse psychological effects than the physiological ones. It snatched from me the dream which was so dear to me and it never resurfaced during the gruelling therapy sessions of the last few months. Only when i am faced with the reality of losing life, do i consider the possibility of taking chances with it.
A chance. Just a simple text saying : I like you. Or saying that after some formal chit-chat, asking about the weather, likes , dislikes...
My hands shake as i grab hold of my mobile. I Pause to consider the possibilities .
1.) I tell him that i like him but he doesn't think its mutual . - Sad
2.) I tell him that i like him and he doesn't like me but he has to be polite to me because i am dying so he says yes - Unacceptable
3.) I tell him that i like him, and he likes me too. I die after a few days leaving him sad.
4.) None of these options.
I realize that i choose none of these options. I cannot still do in my new-found courage endowed by my death-sentence what i couldn't do during the stability period of my life. It starts to hurt. Until i remember something i saw in a movie.
A mailing service which mails your contact at the time you set up . That is just the best solution i think. IN my mind i perform all the calculations, put google to use on how long a person can survive in my condition, get opinions from different doctors worldwide. The answer, horrifyingly is the same, If i fight the symptoms of my disease to my death, now that the cause cannot be removed, a month is my farthest shot. I have made up my mind.
With my heart beating at its double rate, i type in an email. I put in my feelings. I tell him about how i have felt all along. I put in my sadness, and my desperation at the news of my fate.
After an hour of writing, a three-page email. I remove everything and send instead :
' I love you'
Saved at 6 : 05 pm ( GST + 05:00)
30/10/2012
( Reminder : 1 month till the mail is sent)
There's no time for after-thoughts because my sisters have come back, carrying a dozen of bags which suspiciouly look like gifts for their little, dying sister.
Maybe that, or this time there are no after-thoughts.
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30 / 11/ 2012
There is a faint cry of a baby in my ears. A dull drone-like sound of someone whimpering. My hand feels the pressure of a very firm touch of a strong hand, my skin hurts a little at the places it clings to my bones. I try to speak but my lips are difficult to move. My throat is dry as well and i want water. I open my eyes to attract someone's attention and to my relief they slightly open, though my eyeballs are swinging a little as my eyelids go up in mid-air. My first sight after three days of blackout is my father and mother standing next to me. Their faces so sad that it is hard to recognize them from the happy people they had once been. I try to smile and this time i am successful. There's a funny choking sound coming from my mother's throat and suddenly I sense a movement in the room as everyone moves closer around my bed. Holding hands, breathing quietly. Now and then i hear a cry but i cannot ask anyone to stop. There's no energy left in me for words. I just stare blankly at the drip injecting into me the finishing supply of glucose. A substance injected to give you energy. I am annoyed by its uselessness on me. I am annoyed at mother for not seeing how life has abandoned me, and how this drip gets to make such an obvious show of reflecting my helplessness in its own.
I know i am going to die this time because the excruciating pain in my body has stopped. As if someone rooted out the pain centres of my body during the black-out, leaving a gentle insensitivity to everything. Now that the pain has gone, i don't mind death so much. My only question to myself is that why is the clock ticking still? Why haven't i died already?
As if answering a question, i see a shadow behind the door. The shadow growing clearer as i try to gaze harder, ignoring the pain in my eye muscles which cannot take a strain of that kind anymore. This final act of putting in all of my strength is worth the effort because I am sure , i can tell apart this shadow, this silhouette against every other shadow in the room. My heart, just some beats away from its final beat goes into an overdrive. There is a frantic beeping of monitors around my bed. The shadow is getting clearer each second. Until i can make out the shoulders, the arms, the neck, the torso, the face. The face in my dreams...
Clear enough for my mind to register. Clear enough for my mind to hang on to the final thought it will ever think : Close enough for my ears to register the most beautiful words that made death more ugly and unacceptable than ever :
''I love you too ''
The last thing i do in this word is hope that cancer drugs are not hallucinogenic
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