Does it not tell us –
If you cannot decide when and how you want to make your
exit from this world, are we in full control of our lives?
I wish to die under a beautiful tree as I sleep in its
shade and suddenly life goes out of me. But I guess that is not the way it will
be.
Our priest says that when you are born, your date of death
has been registered in heaven.
When you see a life going before you and going slowly and
somewhere knowing it is going but believing that it will not go, you come to
acknowledge much more those unseen forces outside of you and the inner voices
inside of you.
No medical treatment is going to save that life when the
time has come.
The day after we admitted my mother to the hospital, my
sister sees a black forest crow on my mother’s bed. We are foxed how the
crow entered right inside the room when the door and windows were shut. The
crow is known as the ominous omen of death. Or as is said it represents Saturn
or Shani. A clear signal from the forces above a day after mom’s
hospitalisation.
So she had started packing her things for the other world.
Not literally, as come to think of it they don’t allow you to take anything
from this world to the other. Only the soul goes with all the good or bad in
its accounts.
I believe now my mom’s journey began almost 3 months ago.
That came with a voice in the middle of the night telling me to go and visit
our family temple. Our family including my mother had never visited the temple.
I did trust that voice and went to my father’s village in Kerala for the first
time, visited my father’s mother’s home. I stood outside that locked home with
just a black dog sitting outside looking at me. Was the black dog too trying to
tell me something, like the black crow?
What is the connection? Of me going to my grandmother’s
home and my mother’s passing away? In post funeral rituals, when chanting the
vedic rites, my brother is asked to utter my father’s mother’s name. My
mother will take her place in the other world and merge with her husband, my
father. Maybe it was meant that I had to accomplish that long outstanding
visit to my father’s and grandmother’s village home before my mom could depart
this world?
We may doubt the veracity of the year-long intensive
rituals that the son has to do post his parent’s death. Priests refer to an
in-depth spiritual documentation of the soul’s journey after it leaves the body
as per Hindu sages hundreds and hundreds of years ago. These are hard to
believe in the modern world and will be questioned and questioned for its
veracity.
During the last few weeks, there were many external and
internal signs that seemed incomprehensive. My mom used to close her fists and
then open it and say here take, but there was nothing. She used to fidget with
the bedsheet with her hands. My mother took the name of a person long dead. Or
blabbering so many things like chandanam (sandalwood), Lord Shiva’s name in
sleep. Then she would always look around the room as if she sees somebody. As I
read articles, these are signs that so many people on the verge of leaving this
earth exhibit. So how does one explain these? How does one explain the
exit of the soul from the body and what happens exactly on it’s way out.
There was another very significant external sign to say
that something was to happen and that again through a bird.
The bird Bhardwaj over the last 6-7 months was often heard
outside our home. It is seen rarely. I read that the bird is rare in
cities and it is a good omen. Rural people believe it brings luck.
A day before I was leaving for Kerala to visit my father’s
village and family temple, I was sitting in my balcony sipping tea when the
Bhardwaj came right there and sat on the window sill of our 3rd floor
residence. It is very rare for a Bhardwaj to come so high up as it is said to
be a shy bird. It looked at me with its red eyes for a minute. I adored its
beauty but attached no significance to it coming to my window.
I reach my cousin’s home in Kerala, where I was to stay for
the next four days. His home is about ten minutes away from my father’s
village. Outside his home, 3 Bhardwaj birds were sitting on a tree. I still
didn’t attach any significance and felt it was just a coincidence.
Two days after arriving back to Mumbai, I hear more than
300 crows cawing and making such a noise on my terrace. Believe me I have never
seen so many crows ever in my life and that too all collected on every inch of
my terrace. We stay on the last floor and the terrace is above us. I realise
that they are cawing, seeing something, so I rush to the terrace. And what do I
see, two Bhardwaj birds, one on top of the other, fighting. I could not
understand what that meant. But I realised then and there this was some kind of
message. I thought it must be a good omen but then they were fighting so I was
confused. When I recount this to my priest now, he says that when you see two
birds fighting, it means something bad is to happen or death is near. Come to
think of it now, before this, I have never seen two birds fighting like this,
not one on top of the other.
In my own theory as weird as it may sound all the ancestors
were watching (as it is believed that crows in some way are messengers from our
ancestors) and the fight was to call my mother to them. Perhaps she was
resisting?
At home over the last few months, my mother went back in
time. She spoke much about my father praising him. She had not done so in so
many years interim. He passed away 20 years ago.
She was gradually reaching her destination. At the hospital
she asked for repentance for certain things. She thanked the beautiful 80th birthday
we had celebrated on Dec 2, 2018. She told me she wanted to give a shawl to an
old house help Shiva who had been of immense support to her when she had to
manage the home with 3 small kids. We had not seen him for over 30 years. His
brother who keeps visiting us, brought him from the village and my mom
decorated him with a shawl in the hospital. Decorating a shawl has a deep
significance in Hindu tradition. There is special rite in the last rituals for
the departed of an offering of clothes.
She spoke of my father’s estranged brother who we have
never seen and of whom she has never spoken of all these years. She referred to a
letter, some 50 years ago that my father’s mother had written to my father. While in
hospital towards her last days she asked us to bring that letter so as to read
it out to us. We had never seen that letter.
As we recount these incidences to our family priest, he
says she was already moving out of this world to join my father and his family.
My mother loved talking. She talked a lot during the first
ten days of hospitalisation. Even with the bipap machine over her mouth which
was to assist her breathing, she would continue to talk through it bringing
good cheer all round with the nurses and hospital staff who enjoyed that banter
and requested her to refrain from talking too much for her own good. She then probably
resigned herself to fate. She gradually slept more and talked less.
Her peaceful look in the hospital now tells me she was
already in the other world. I took my mom for the EEG of the brain (it is like
ECG of the heart) test one day. We had to take her on a stretcher from the
first floor to the 2nd floor. They had washed her hair in the morning as it
should not be oily. With her loose hair, she looked so beautiful, so young, so
healthy and fresh and so so very peaceful. It didn’t matter to her what they
were doing or what test they were taking. She never asked me what is happening
to her. That night I actually dreamt my mom could be back home younger and
stronger. That peaceful look still makes me wonder what was going on with the
soul and the body.
The day before her passing away Feb 13th was
the very auspicious Mahashivratri day. I fasted on that day, only for the
second time in my life. My mother comes from Vaikom village in Kerala where
Lord Shiva is the main deity and the village is known for its very famous and
big Shiva temple, located close to my mother’s home. We had visited it many
years back. I showed her videos of the temple on that day and she looked at
them intensively.
The next day February 14, I was with her since 6 am. She
told me at around 10 am that “Shiva has not yet come”. I was
perplexed on what that meant. At around 11 am she demanded I give her some
dosas to eat. So typical of her. She loved dosas. I asked the doctors for
permission as till that morning they said only liquids could be given. The
doctor on duty said yes you can try and give her solids. She ate 1/4thdosa
and drank water. Soon after she relieved herself on the diaper. I was standing
by her side and then I saw tears strolling down. I acted as if I had not seen
it as I wanted to be brave. I now wished I had wiped it and said it is okay, do
not worry about us, we will be fine. But how was I to know she will leave us?
Last words that never got spoken.
Her last moment was strange. Me and my siblings, all three
of us were there in the hospital. In the 10 minutes that all three of us were
out of the CCU, she got a cardiac arrest. When I entered after the 10 minutes
and shook her, she did not get up. Her face had a deep frown. I wished now it
was a smile as she always had a smiling face and I have never seen a
frown on her face my entire life. The frown could be from the last pain or the pain
of leaving us?
I read now that the flame inside a dying person shines
brightly for some hours. Like people suffering from dementia become normal for
some hours before going away. That explains how the day after we brought her
home from the 2 weeks in the hospital to see if she recovers in a home
environment (but sadly we had to again hospitalize her 10 days later), she told
me she would like to sit on the bed. I asked her if she wanted to walk. She
said yes! All these days in the hospital they had tried mobilising her with the
physiotherapist! She walked that morning so very easily with me right up
to the front door of our home, some 10 meters away. She looked out and almost
asked me if she should go for her regular walk. She then walked back to her bed
in the inner room. After that she never managed to even stand. These go beyond
medical fitness tests. Beyond modern day questions.
She died on the very auspicious Mahashivratri day as
Shivratri this year extended till Feb 14 late noon. She passed away at 1.45 pm
though doctors declared her gone at 3 pm.
Lord Shiva took my mother Sivakami (means wife of Lord Nataraja) or later Kamini (means beautiful woman) away to his peaceful abode. He was
asking her to pack up but she was doing it very slowly as she did not want to
leave her three children behind.
She tried to say her byes to us in so many ways. She gave
us so many indications that she was packing up. The cosmos gave me so many
indications that she was being called above. But we were hoping against hope
that she will not leave us.