It’s hugely demanding to write an obituary note on somebody who was the most valued person in your life, a person who altruistically loved you.
Someone without whom your basis in the universe wouldn’t have been possible, someone in whose warm womb you have been given the fortification you needed to breathe, eat, and grow for 36 long weeks.
It is not possible to coin words or phrases for that lady who was my mother, and who left me, crushed.
The lady, from a patrician family of West Bengal, with her beauty, glamour and intelligence, illuminated our lives with lights and fragrance of elegance, education, and humanity.
She passed away quietly, but her exit was deafeningly thunderous, that busted our senses and systems.
I could see her being carried from emergency to the cabin to the ICU to the HDU and back to the ICU. She was given failed treatment from supposedly the best doctors of the subcontinent, backed up by the most modern equipment of the state of the art hospital in Dhaka.
I witnessed how my mother was being attended to, and given treatments that we all trusted so much.
We all wished that this time too she would dodge the ailment and come back. That did not happen.
As I look back, I quite rightly see the time and date that the Almighty had fixed for her reception into the other world! The holy month of Ramadan and the blessed night of 21st.
God had planned differently on this occasion. She went off from home (July 10) never to return. Frail and tired, she resigned from the world and went into the cold cabin of the hospital.
The most popular and a sugary person went quiet. Her silence was roaring in each corner of our homes, and in the corridors of the hospitals. Her calm was so loud that all the blasts in the world together couldn’t match the sound and fury of her silence.
Her brief stint with the ailment was hectic. She could not respond to the drugs that she was given to pull through. The doctors at ICU kept changing their drugs and doses.
We were confident to greet her back and wheel her to the car to take her home very soon. Doctors never said that there was no hope.
I met her for the last time in consciousness on July 15. She wore an oxygen mask. She looked up at me, put her frail hand over my head and drew me closer to her. I groaned as she also failed to utter any word.
No words passed between us. Fountains of surging tears from inside me drenched her bosom. I sought forgiveness for all my failures. She looked on and on and on … until the attending nurse asked me to leave.
I never knew that that would be our last meeting. So many things remain untold. Alas, if I could reach her heart and decode her gazes.
I know I would never be able to know her last wishes.
She slipped into a coma the next day following cardiac arrest, and was provided with the last resort – life support devices. Inside our hearts we were apprehensive of the ventilator treatment.
Doctors suggested new treatment every day. We went on signing undertakings for each new treatment they started, and went on praying to God.
As the moments passed, the fear grew. Hopes faded, and friendly doctors in white now appeared to be distant persons. They started losing hope and dimming ours as well.
The end came on July 20. The 21st of Ramadan. It was around 3pm that we received a phone call.
We all rushed to the ICU on the second floor. I requested the doctor to allow me inside, so that I could stand by her side and bid her the valediction. As the only surviving son, I had lots to bear.
I stood witness to the toughest event of life, as she was being transported to the other world. The angels were preparing her departure. Head turned towards the Kaaba, she breathed on peacefully. She believed in God all her life, and for all divine reasons God also believed in her.
I realised how helpless one could be. The strength, wits, knowledge and guts – all freeze here. You are just another speck in God’s world!
I turned into a mere onlooker, with the Himalayas over my chest. I touched her, as she touched me countless times as a little one, and hummed to me those sweet lines with her melodic voice.
I so religiously wished her eyes would open to look at me for once! She did not turn, her eyes did not open. I cried and begged to the Almighty not to take her away now. I shared many things with her at that moment that I did not before.
Her adored Kany, Sunny, Rona, Rumki, Ema, Piku, Pinky, and Popo (grandchildren), waiting in the lounge, yearning for a return of their darling grandma. The world stopped for us at 7:33pm.