08 April 2014, 12:19 PM IST
"Even mothers have to die" said a heartbroken friend about his ailing mother. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since, because a close friend's grief is necessarily mine, but also because it comes at a time when events have colluded to put the fear of death into my tender young children. And knowing what's sparked it off, doesn't make it easier to deal with.
My father goes under the knife today. We have downplayed it for the kids so they don't worry too much. Yet children have a sixth sense and can detect unrest. Mommy is worried. Mommy is not sleeping well. That must mean Mommy is unwell. They know now from various unavoidable discussions that when a person is especially sick, they sometimes don't recover. They have understood death for a while in an academic way. All of a sudden it feels immediate, something that, bizarrely, lives and breathes, and unnerves them with its brooding presence. Death is suddenly as real to them as the monsters under their bed. Those are very real indeed. And the fear of death they are unexpectedly grappling with is the fear of my death. The monsters under their bed are lying in wait for Mommy.
To grasp the extent of their anxiety, I tried to recall how I felt about death as a child. For the longest time, I didn't believe in it any more than I did in fairies. A beloved great grandfather died in Kolkata while we lived abroad. I was far enough away to get away with telling myself he hadn't died, he'd just taken his "Shingara Gari" or Samosamobile for a spin somewhere nice but distant. I taught myself to think of him with his cane and his tweed suit, not wading through Kolkata floods to spend the afternoon with me, but off on an adventure on some enchanted highway. It was a pleasant thought and I was, after all, just eight.
In my twenties and early thirties, I continued to be sceptical about death. Like most twenty-somethings, I felt immortal and took risks that I now sternly warn my children against. In my mid-twenties, I moved to another continent and for nearly 15 years after, thought of my parents as thirty year olds (even as I passed them by). It's an easy cop-out when you're far from home and don't have to watch your loved ones age. So I froze them conveniently in time, forever thirty-odd, sitting around our dining table in the Philippines, with a scrumptious lunch before them, chatting about books and life. I finally had to admit my father had aged, two years ago in Paris, when his stomach couldn't keep up with the steady stream of gastronomic exotica we consumed on that trip, nor his legs with the hours of walking, even though he carried on gamely. Today, as he is operated on, I am acutely aware that he's closer to 70 than the 30 I fondly imagine him to be.
Like some people embrace religion in their old age, last year I finally acknowledged Death. My paternal grandmother, the last of my grandparents and the one I was closest to, died. With that the buffer that existed between Mortality and my parents was removed. This buffer theory is strange but comforting. While there are grandparents around, older and naturally more infirm, mortality is, sadly, something we think of in connection with them rather than our parents. With the death of our grandparents, it has direct access to our parents, and that dread is now ours.
Prematurely, my children are tackling this fear. Something closer to home than my dad's operation has triggered this. The kids saw me faint the other day. I've been doing it for so long, I'm quite matter-of-fact about it. It runs in the family too. When my sister and I were younger and lived under the same roof, we often keeled over together, and called it "The Sen Sisters' Synchronised Swooning" (if you can't laugh about illness, what can you do?). My children know I black out, but witnessing it has frightened them. It's not humdrum for them, even if it is for me. "Mommy," asked four year old Ayana, her doe eyes brimming, "When you black out do you die a little?" I finally understood what had spooked them, and to what extent. It was time to discuss death again but from a more personal perspective.
We had talked about it before in connection with road safety, what not to ingest and "Stranger Danger". At my son's age, I was allowed to play on the streets unsupervised. These days, there are always responsible adults keeping an eye on kids playing outside, which is only natural when the news abounds with horror stories about the monsters that prey on them. In the UK, the government itself conducts campaigns warning children against the blandishments of strangers. And schools send letters home if vagrants are seen hanging about their gates. This might strike some as excessive but when your child's security is at stake, most parents would rather err on the side of caution. But it does lead to conversations like the one I overheard between my daughter and her year-older brother. "You will stumble", she said, wagging her plump little finger under his button nose, after he'd jumped from a low wall, "fall on your head and DIE!" It made me wonder if we were depriving our children of that blissful ignorance – that unawareness of danger and death - we possessed?
Were we one of the few generations that had that innocence? I am struck by how children's books have gone from talking about death openly to using euphemisms and back again. Red Riding Hood's grandma was eaten in the original story. She carried on being a tasty snack right up to the mid-Seventies. From then on, she's no longer killed, just stowed away under the bed while the wolf baits the little girl. At the end, the wolf is merely shooed away while the little hoodie and her posse wrap this once savage story up with tea and cake. Of course, now, the most popular series of them all, Harry Potter, starts with death and ends with apocalyptic destruction, while video games normalise, even glorify such things.
So I sat them down again, to dispel their fears without resorting to lies and half-baked stories. They are too clever to fall for glib fabrications and are exposed to more of the world than we ever were. Barely out of preschool, they know their history and biology, and have that questioning spirit we have instilled in them. Even as I laced our conversation with the humour and whimsy I am comfortable with, I kept it real. Mothers don't die that easy these days, I said. And explained how advances in medical science had made it possible for people to live longer lives. In the last century, in the prosperous places of the world, life expectancy had increased by almost 40 years. As recently as 1980, if you lived till 79, you would have lived to a grand old age. By 2010, it was almost the norm to live to your eighties. And in 2050? They predict 4.1 million centenarians that year. The irony is that even as we become aware of death earlier than ever before, death itself has been postponed for most. A long life spent mulling death is not an attractive prospect but I kept that thought to myself. Instead I talked frankly about my fainting. When I swoon, I said, I have lit-up dreams, like Joan of Arc's visions from God. Mine are certainly not from God, it's just my brain taking an enforced break. I am not dying. Not even a little.
To make them feel less helpless I told them what they could do if it happened when their dad wasn't around. I taught them to make emergency calls. They were excited at the idea of being "superheroes". "Syon Stormchild and Ayana Lightningquick (their superhero names)", I said to them," I have every intention of living till a 105". "Bet you won't like it", I continued, "When mommy's still trying to cuddle you when you're 71!" Ewww, they'd ordinarily say to something like that, we'd be far too old for cuddles, Mommy! This time they put their arms around me. "Mommy", my five year old son said, "I never want you to let go. There may be others I have to hold on to as well by then but there'll always be room for you".
As grown-up as they are and as often as they turn the tables on Mommy by reassuring her when she thinks they are in need of comfort, there is one thing she can still do for them. When I go in at night, I make a point of showing my disdain for the monsters under the bed. I must show my children that Gruff, Huff and Gribbles don't bother me, and shouldn't worry them. Mommy can totally take them on. And will do so, for as long as their monsters are so real to them, they have names.
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