A Note on June 14, 2021
- Hasarel Gallage
- Aug 28, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 13, 2021
I looked at him as he was telling me, trying to sound as sympathetic and apologetic as he could, that my father had passed in the small hours of the day. It had been sudden but inevitable. His organs had failed altogether and while they tried their best, there was little they could do to get them back on track. He went on saying what I had to do next, to go to the Hospital Police, then to the morgue, sign documents and bring some other documents from home, to cremate him within 24 hours given the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. I listened, without emotion, without making a reply. It was as if time and life had come to a brief halt. I tried to wrap my head around what he was telling but there was too much information. All this time, behind this man’s explanations and directions about next steps, all I could think of was that Thatta was lying dead behind me, covered in a shroud of the bedspread he was lying hours ago fighting for breath, fighting for life, alone. And then there was the awareness that apart from the ICU staff I was the only one who knew this heavy and unfathomable news and I was supposed to break it to others. I was supposed to break it to others, to tell my mother who was still waiting in the car, waiting impatiently until I came with news of Thatta. I was to tell this to my sister who was at home, who had not seen my father for two weeks since he left home. I was to tell this to the rest of my family, wake them up early in the morning to this unfortunate news.
I interrupted him. I apologised and requested him to tell me what I had to do first, the rest I will figure out slowly. He gave me a compassionate nod and asked me to bring Thatta’s birth certificate and NIC. And before leaving he turned a page in a record book where I had to write that I was aware of the demise of my father, sign below and write within brackets that I was his daughter.
Not many days ago, in a late-night desperate phone call I had with a very close friend I asked if I had gone numb of feelings because I was handling this ordeal with a surprising resilience. He replied to me that sometimes in life our body and mind understand that we must essentially be resilient and, in such moments, even the worst worrywarts find their strength. When the man asked me to write and sign about my father’s death, my friend’s words came to my mind. Despite shivering fingers, I managed to write the statement and come out of the ICU.
I looked again at the black disposal bag into which they had stuffed Thatta’s belongings, his final traces of life. I saw this bag while waiting at the entrance to the ICU until they let me in and not even in a passing second, that I saw it as a sign to the news awaiting me. This was a tragedy we had not prepared for. We knew he won’t come home as soon as we wanted him to, but we expected him to come home one day, better late than never. I had come today expecting another regular visit. It was me who brought him here in the ambulance from Matara. It was my first time riding an ambulance, with the shrill of sirens, a sound that always brought my hands clasped in prayer for whoever riding inside. Never in those moments I thought I will carry my father in a similar ambulance, unaware if there was anybody out there who was praying for us. It was me who brought him here and it was also me, with an unfortunate coincidence, who had to wrap things up. Despite the gruesome experience, I was partly grateful that it was me but not my mother or my sister who had to do it, knowing very well that they would not be able to handle it. I particularly thanked the gods who led me there that fateful day instead of my mother who would usually visit my father daily. It was scary even to imagine what would have happened to her had she come that day instead of me.
I had to decide quickly. I didn’t have time to ponder on the could have beens. But as human as I am, I needed some time to organise my thoughts, because no matter how strong you are, this was an unprecedentedly challenging moment, I was bare, vulnerable, and at my wit’s end of what to expect. I needed a quiet moment with myself. I walked towards a window and looked outside. The hospital was waking up to life with people scurrying towards wards to visit their family and friends. The pandemic had made things even more complicated restricting the number of visits and then there were covid patients, the hospital on the brink of reaching its maximum capacity. But nothing made sense to me with the mightiest figure in my life lying motionless. I had to muster up courage and take the calls, break the news.
What followed is a blur. I called the first few people whom I had to inform, and every call ended with a vail as soon as I revealed the news. Everything else happened fast, bringing him home and sending him away to a more peaceful, blissful place. Strangely I faced all of it without shedding a tear. Sometimes I was disappointed with myself for being so rigid and even worried if people would find me an insensitive, ungrateful child not lamenting the death of her father. But that’s not the truth. The truth was that the grief was much bigger than I could possibly express. The truth required me to stay strong, to take up the responsibility onto my shoulder and put up a strong face. The truth was that grieving could wait, work could not.
Arundati Roy, in her masterpiece novel The God of Small Things writes, “It’s curious to know how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of life that it purloined”. And that’s what happened to me. The first few days I was too busy to think of anything with so much work to oversee. When running from one place to another, the morgue, hospital, florist, and the cemetery, although I was surrounded with death, I couldn’t stop, have a moment to myself and think. When everything ended, the crowds scattered away, I suddenly found myself all alone, all the time for myself and for the first time the awareness of my father’s death started to sink in, and it hit me hard. The fact that he was gone forever, that he doesn’t share our home with us anymore, that we had to learn to live without him, that there were only four of us left now, no more political discussions and memory sharing during dinner time, no more road trips with him asking me and Akka to check the directions using his 96’ Road Atlas (like many others of his generation, he was skeptical about Google Maps!), came as an incredibly heavy and overwhelming apprehension. It was too much for me to take in, too much for you to imagine.
After three months since his demise, despite an exciting adventure that lies ahead of me (another regret I have is that he was spared of this good news since it came just one week after his death), the void remains. Although I try to evade painful upsurge of his memory and loss, it resurges at very random moments, when I pass by his photo in the living room, when we do the chores that he used to do or open a book only to see his immaculate and artistic handwriting. And I immediately find myself in that daunting ICU, the man telling me that my father had passed, the disbelief and the shock that followed. These moments haunt me no matter how much I try to run away from them, no matter how much I refuse to talk about them.
This pandemic has made death commonplace, an almost clichéd occurrence that we are no longer surprised that close to 200 people die every passing day. For us, they have become figures more than the people those figures embody. Most of us see numbers in the news alerts but fail to see the people who make up those numbers or the families and loved ones who were left behind. But now more than ever, my understanding of death along with what it entails is vivid and intricate. Now, what I see in those figures are names, people, and loving families. What I see behind those digits are regrets, failed promises, unfulfilled dreams and, good news waiting to be shared. Like Arundati Roy writes, all that eventually remains, more than the memory of life, is the memory of death and all things left behind, forgotten, ignored, unaccomplished, and unacclaimed.
Note: My father fought for life for two weeks under intensive care and passed away due to complications of Tetanus infection on June 14, 2021. This is published on the occasion of his three months' remembrance.
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