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Spice of life | Words fall short as the sands of time run out
We looked into each other’s eyes, just as we used to during our courtship and held a silent conversation one last time before her eyes went blank
The world dissolved into a haze as the doctor confirmed a fatal prognosis for my wife, a cancer patient. As I was the primary pillar of our family in this hour of grief, I reined in my tears and only let my pent-up emotions flood my eyes in private. I decided not burden our three teenaged children, who were worried enough as it is, with the fear of impending doom.
Once when I was wiping her mouth with a handkerchief, she smiled wryly as if she knew the foreboding news I was withholding from her.
“How do I look?” she asked me out of the blue. Within the month, the aggressive disease had reduced her to skin and bones and sapped her of her strength so much so that she could hardly walk.
“You look more beautiful than when I first saw you on our wedding night under a heavy veil and layers of make up,” I teased her. I expected a laugh to brighten her face, instead tears spilled from her eyes. I understood. Now, that she was dependent on me for her personal needs, I could read the uneasiness in her eyes.
I realised, it was time to remind her of our wedding vows, which obligated both the groom and bride to stand by each other through thick and thin, for better or for worse.
“Angels of the heavens are earnestly calling me,” she impetuously uttered one day. I dismissed the words as a hallucination, but, she went quiet after that, and kept silently chanting the Almighty’s name under her breath. I was out of the house when she had to be rushed to the hospital a few days later. As I walked into the ward, I saw her head resting on my sister’s lap, her wide eyes immediately commanding my attention.
As we looked into each other’s eyes just as we used to during our courtship, we did not realise that it was our penultimate moment together, which would in a the blink of an eye morph into the ‘ultimate’ moment. We had a telepathic conversation, and together remembered our courtship, marriage, honeymoon and the birth of our two daughters, and son.
The sand was rapidly running out from the hourglass, and I silently berated her for failing to uphold her promise of hold my hand through the milestones that were yet to come – our children’s convocation, their nuptials, and the birth of our grandchildren.
My wife’s voice rattled in her throat, in a hopeless attempt to have her say, but then her eyes went blank, and my sister gently closed them with trembling hands.
unsharma3116@gmail.com
(The writer is an Una-based freelance contributor)
