When Baba (your grand father) was sick, we tossed around many hypotheses. We wanted to figure out how his liver cirrhosis did not get detected sooner, we debated over how effective the treatment would be in Bangladesh, and we anticipated how the nursing would be better in Calcutta. One thing was common – every body were simply baffled, taken aback, and were heart broken to say the list. Before anyone could do anything meaningful for him he passed away within 3 months from his diagnosis. We blamed a lot to the medical system for poor treatments.
At that same period I came to know that Peter Jennings was diagnosed with lungs cancer. It was an awful shock. One evening he showed up on the TV briefly and announced in a broken voice about his illness. I told your mom about Peter while you two were in Dhaka. Among the three anchormen in our time, I liked him the best. I remained a passionate viewer of his program “World news” for 15 years. At one point I even started imitating some of his styles in spoken English. However, four and a half months later he too lost the battle. I could not blame any thing this time since the best medical treatments were at his disposal.
One day I became interested to know a little bit more of Lance Armstrong since he is a cancer survivor. I purchased one of his books. He was diagnosed in 1996 with testicular cancer that spread to his brain and lungs. Interestingly enough he has been cancer free since his chemotherapy in December 1996. He then became the first human being to win the tour de France 7 straight time after he had recovered! Your mom also read the same book on him.
We can never know for sure if Baba could have done anything differently in his prognosis. We can never know why Peter’s disease did not get detected sooner. We can never comprehend why all those cancerous cells stopped mutating in Lance’s body. Usually they stay aggressive until the host body becomes a total pandemonium and there is no room for their recklessness!
I know for sure that many of the events in our life do not give us an option to steer them in any other direction – they have their mind of their own. This year many such events snatched our sanity to an isolated island. Nothing, especially your mom seems familiar to me anymore. She appears to be quite a different person – constantly fighting off the dreadful feeling of losing the most important person in her life. Often she redefines in her mind the religion once she knew. She become numb about many things that otherwise would have made her agitated.
I on the other hand keep hoping that some how your mom becomes an agile, vibrant and spirited butterfly that once she was.