I have been unfortunate to witness two deaths in last 4 days. -Both quiet similar to each other. First of a friend's father and the other of my real uncle.
My friend's father's case was an open and shut case of accident. Everybody knew he could die and it seems everybody was 'ready' for it. The only thing that went out of the usual course was that somebody had the heart to rob him off his money , mobile and gold when he lied there unconscious - fighting fo his life. Brilliant piece of humanity I must say.
My uncle's case on the other hand comes much more as a shock - probably because it happened at such a pace that it was difficult to sink it. He had been a jolly healthy man until a few days back - pretty much like a 20 something just graduating - thinking he has forever to make all the dreams come true. He had just had a nice chat with a few relatives that evening - probably he was even planning about what he will do in the coming months - "there are so many things to do - could somebody please stop the time !" Well - this time, time did stop - forever.
Though I have been staying in a hospital for all my life ( no i am not a mental patient - my parents are doctors), I must confess I had never been to an ICU, and though I have seen my parents waking up or returning at unearthly hours and worrying about the patients life like they were relatives, I had never given death a thought. So the hospital trip was as eyeopening to me as the dying man must have been to gautam buddha. I nearly missed a heart beat when I saw him in the ICU.
He had a brain haemorrhage. He was immediately admitted - rather admitted, operated, observed, medicated, operated again ... till they had exhausted it all - treatment , money and hope. In The initial days we thought he could get up any moment then. But moments turned to hours to days to a complete month. People had been so anxiously looking for a sign of recovery that they even reveried that they saw him blink. Alas ! So we had an unconscious man - who did not feel talk or underatand. All the ekta kapoor serials suddenly started seeming true when we came across the big word "coma" and we were typically left with a single answer for all the questions - 'we dont know' . Will he regain consciousness ? will he talk ? will he walk ? will he remember ? will he survive .... ? We dont know. We tried consoling each other by telling stories about how such pateints have miraculously survived - some after a year - 2 or even more. One of my relatives even went to the extent of telling a story of how a person who went into coma before independence woke up after independence. ... Thats all we could do after all.
Then one evening - his heart started having a problem. The BP droped, it was artificially kept up. He stopped breathing, was kept on a ventilator. His brain was dead. But now there was a bigger question to answer. How long should this go on .. just how long ... ?The minute the ventilator was taken out - the game would be over. I dont know if other people have a right to decide whether a person should die ... irrespective of however bad life it is. I feel extremely fortunate not be present there to decide - the life and death of a person - more so of a relative ... of some body very close to you ... to decide for a death which ends all the pain for that person - but with that, all the hope of seeing him alive. But somebody has to decide .. and so they did. The ventilator was sent to rest ... until next death.
At this moment however, i dont feel sorrow or loss - I cant help a sad smile - at the human beings .. the hollow hypocracy of human achievement and progress ... and their superlative insignificance in the grand scheme of things.