An old colleague died early Friday morning. She was my age, if not younger. A close friend, whose cousin she was married to, informed me of the news today. She had contracted H1N1, the doctors hadn’t caught it in time and when they did, she had gone straight on the ventilator. She never recovered consciousness from that time and died, nine days later.
I had known her when I had first started working. It was her first job too. We were both fresh out of college. I was hubris. She seemed quieter, less certain of things than I was. We had worked together on the same project, gone to Paris around the same time to complete the project. Once the project was over, I moved on, lost touch. I came to know of her again, a few years ago, when a new acquaintance grew to be one of our closest friends. She had married a cousin of one of these friends. My friend told me that she had enquired after me and had asked my friend to hook us up when I was in India next. She had become a VP and managed hundreds of people, I heard. I never took her up on the offer. And now I never can.
Today was the arangetram of the daughter of another friend of mine, a friend I had also met working at the same place, at my first job. His daughter is hardly eleven years old, but she danced with the poise and grace of someone much older. Maya enjoyed the dance and the music; she couldn’t take her eyes off the violin and mridangam, even when the dancer was off stage.
As I watched her dance, my thoughts drifted to the dance of life. Three people, we shared a moment in time and place. How far apart our strands have been strung now. Each has a daughter, but one is dancing, one is rejoicing and one is bereft. The grief of the unmothered, the joy of the dancer and the watcher, all mingled together to bludgeon my mind, befuddle it, in a way that I can’t seem to express.
I am fortunate to have not been touched by death until very late in my life. Death had been a guest many times before: when my grandparents died, when the daughters of colleagues of my father’s had died – one of rabies, bitten by a dog she was caring for and the other by a snake bite -, when the parents of close friends had died. But death had never done an extended stay. Never touched me, except in sharing the sorrow of a friend’s grief. Then Kitty died. And three years later, I still can’t get my head wrapped around death. I still can’t seem to comprehend how someone is alive one instant and dead the next.
Two weeks ago, Maya stubbed her big toe and cut it when she fell running around the swimming pool. One morning, a week later, I examined her toe. It was swollen and black and infected. I rushed her to the paediatrician who prescribed an antibiotic. A week later, Maya’s toe was normal. Not too long ago, people with such infections either died or had to have their legs amputated. Today morning, I had put Maya in the jog stroller – we were going for a run together after a hiatus of several months – when I realized that I had forgotten my cap. I put the brake on and walked back towards the house to pick up my cap. Something made me turn and I saw the stroller rolling backwards onto the street. I had the stroller in my hands, safe, within a second since I was just a few steps off. But, I wondered, what if I had not turned around in time ?
Everywhere I turn, it seems death stalks us and how we escape, eludes me. Of course, no one escapes forever. I read that the Episcopalians have a saying “In the midst of life we are in death”. The only solace I find is that, at the same time, “in the midst of death we are in life”.
News comes that a friend far away
is dying now
I look up and see small flowers appearing
in spring grass outside the window
and can’t remember their name – James, by W.S. Merwin
