On summer memories

My grandmother is in the hospital again. Her health has been fast declining. It was not even a week ago that they had to put her on oxygen support. The doctors had insisted that she be on it 24/7. It looked like she was getting better.

But she started having difficulty breathing yesterday. My parents are there taking care of her. Yet, it feels shameful to not be there alongside her. I have legitimate reasons for not being there. Yet today they feel like lies. My immunocompromised health, my financial responsibilities here, my finances - they all feel like lies I tell myself. Because I know. The writing is on the wall.

My grandmother hasn't recognized me in over 5 years. She imagines that I have a full head of hair and a much younger body. Her face, puzzled, as if working out my features as she flipped through a book in her mind. She'd eventually recognize me. That is, until recently. For the past 2 years, she neither recognizes nor remembers me.

And then one night, she recognized me - as someone else. Someone from her life when she was younger. Despite correcting her, she insisted that I was this person. That was hard to hear. Seeing her getting upset upon being corrected, that was a nightmare.

It was then that I reduced the frequency with which I called. Though I wanted to call every other day like I had done. Even as a kid, I did not like to see the years appear on her face. But now, it was unbearable.

I remember the summer days in Kathmandu I spent with her on the patio. She'd massage my head with hot mustard oil as she told me stories of when she was yonuger. I did not listen well. I was busy day dreaming and making stories of the cloud shapes in the sky. She did not get angry. She never did. I cannot recall a single time she raised her voice or her hands.

She'd often scold me and my brother when we climbed guava trees nearby. We would race to the top competing for the juiciest guava. We never fell and felt invincible. But my grandmother knew better. She would tell us of children from the village who had died having fallen. She would tell me how lucky my father was to have fallen from a tree as a child and survived. Even so, there was no anger in her voice - just concern.

I want to think of those happier times when I look at the photo of her now, draped in oxygen pipes and machinery. I want to close my eyes and smell the dried Tulsi (Holy basil) that she kept in a sachet near her chest. But I smell nothing. My memories of her are fleeting. They are replaced by the person in this photo. My concerns rising.

I talked to her the night before she had to go to the hospital. I have not done so since. I don't talk about this with family. There's a foreboding undercurrent of hopelessness and helpessness in every conversation with them. As if everyone knows what's coming but doesn't want to admit it - for fear of it then becoming real.

Maybe that's why I'm hesitant to speak with her again. Not because she may not remember me or anything, but because it scares me.