Everything is in your heart and in your hands.
What is the world’s most expensive bed? The hospital bed.
You, if you have money, you can hire someone to drive your car, but you cannot hire someone to take your illness that is killing you.
Material things lost can be found. But one thing you can never find when you lose: life.
Whatever stage of life where we are right now, at the end we will have to face the day when the curtain falls.
Please treasure your family love, love for your spouse, love for your friends…
Steve Jobs
Last Thursday, I felt all the weight of the world on my shoulder. Again, I watched flames eat up flesh minutes by minutes.
Last Thursday, I couldn’t write.
Last Thursday, on September 24, 2020, 2:35PM; My grandmother passed away right in front of my eyes as I tried fixing her bed positioning.
I was with her as she was recovering gracefully; Once again, playful, smiling, upbeat and eating; Once again, trying her best to be herself.
But then —
We saw her heartbeat go up to 240-253 from 90-100, as the monitor beeped red and worried.
We saw her tearful, swollen, painful eyeballs; saw every parts of the body swollen with water.
I’d feed her every meal (breakfast, lunch, brunch, dinner, … water), every day, until the day she couldn’t eat or drink anymore.
Laughed with her, cried helpless tears without anybody noticing, slept-a-little but in chilling, unfamiliar fear; googled every shit possible, in hopes that I can bring her back to her normal self.
Honest to god (if there’s one), It’s inexplicably painful to be remembering her finest and the final days with me, with us.
Because, I’ve seen her failing heartbeats over a monitor from 135 to 115 to 65 to 51 to 0.
Because, I held her cold, swollen, white hands and watched her oxygen saturation(SpO2) drop from 96 to 81 to 75 to 0.
Because, I saw her blood pressure get radically low despite continuous Dobutamine IV administration.
Because, I saw her lungs RPM go nil from 24 and 18 and 8.
I know how fortunately vulnerable we human are — than we’d ever know.
I vividly remember, one fine day, we walked her to the hospital on an ambulance. I will never forget her swollen, tired, trying feet.
A week after, I was trying to open her mouth by pressing her tongue downward just so that she can breathe.
Reebhusha sobbing her heart out would rub her hands as we were losing her quickly.
In tears, we had tried everything we could’ve. She did too.
We failed!
Failed!
However, there’s a second part to this story.
P.S. Ours was not merely a grandparent-grandson relationship.
Ours is a relationship of a lifetime.
Eme’ … … I wish I wasn’t writing this.
Sorry!
Her demise is still very poignant & still resonates & it still has the same amount of tragic element involved in it now as it did then & it will always be with us for the rest of our life.