Twenty-Three Reasons My Mother Died

You will never know what your mother went through.

                                               -Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments

My mother died because I misjudged her clinical status.

My mother died because the aide did not inform me she had vomited a third time .

My mother died because the aide did not tell me that after vomiting a third time, mum asked to lie down.

My mother died because I was not alert to her dehydration. 

My mother died because she was using a walker and had walked with it from her sofa to her bed after vomiting once while sitting.

My mother died because she was using a walker to walk and had walked with it from her sofa to her bed, having sat on the sofa for three hours.

My mother died because I was angry after she vomited a second time. Mum, I said my face close to hers as she sat supported by bolster and a cushion with the Turkish cushion cover my sister got months ago from Istanbul. My mother likes beautiful things and these cushion covers were works of art. Mum and I visited five new places in the nine months before she suddenly died. But I digress . Puff. I will take it lightly now. Death. OK the end of the body. Yes big deal. But those photos of mum contemplating a street vendor in the Kasauli bazar and three months later, mum walking across the parking lot after having found her hand crafted table in Dehradun this last summer. That is something friends .That is something. It lets her and me blend into the earth together out of our physical forms. No lets reframe this. Blend into the cosmos together chatting away to eternity.

My mother died because I was angry after she vomited a second time and I had a backache, and she was looking at me dazed.

My mother died because I had to rise at 4 am that day to help her to bathroom, then again at 8 am.

My mother died because she did not say she was feeling different. 

My mother died because I told the aide in mum’s presence. “She will die. She is not going to make it.”

My mother died because I was on the quest for purity which is doomed to fail sooner or later.

My mother died because the aide heard her yelp while she lay in bed, as she had often done at night –-Oye!Oye!–– and that was normal.

My mother died because I thought that she was as I had left her, leaning back on the bolster still sitting up in her bed.

My mother died because I am a poor communicator who did not tell the aide to call me if she asks not to sit anymore. (Mum asked to sleep five minutes after I left the room.)

My mother died because she looked OK to me, talking sense and sitting up, and I was misled by her physical resilience. Medicine is not taught in mathematical proportions and formulas of physiological reserves. It is experience. It is art––the clinical look. Art and experience. But we know vitals well. I did not check vital signs in the three days she was home.

My mother died because as I did not prepare for how to call an ambulance. Imagine. With all of her sick days over three weeks, and two Januarys back, Dad’s four weeks in and out of hospitals, I still did not prepare.

My mother died because as my sister was at a work party with a silenced phone.

My mum died because her primary caregiver was me, a doctor, a daughter at home; her other daughters might have taken her earlier to hospital. 

My mother died because I did not tell my sister that mum is not over the hump. I just harped on her big jump to walking in one day and eating.

My mother died from clouded judgement by the primary caregiver (me, the doctor daughter.)

My mother died because I was optimistic and she had pulled through worse six years ago.

My mother died because she and I were the lone keepers of her frail determined-to-get-well body.

She and I alone. 
And she died. 
Wait, I have a headache. 
Wait, I must mention the beauty and sublimity of it all.

I was reading the Japji two hours prior. That is the essence of Sikh philosophy and our chief prayer. Two hours and 10 minutes prior to the passing on. I have not come up with a salutary word for her death yet. Passing on has some beauty to it—a gentle word that expresses it gently. 

Mum was listening with her eyes closed as I read the Japji aloud from my phone. I sat by her mustard yellow sofa on a brown chair, our backs to the curtains not drawn back fully this morning as she had not requested it. 

“I like to look outside,” she said once some weeks ago. A tall tree and her tall Howea plants in their stone holders are on the other end of the driveway from her bedroom. She was reciting the Japji with me as we sat on her hospital bed two weeks ago. Not today.

I had been forlorn seeing Dad suffer and had not once read the Japji that whole month Dad was sick. Mum suddenly passed away- she gasped a couple of times after her physiological reserves cracked. She had asked for me by name a minute ago or two minutes maybe. She died in my arms. 

Is that beautiful?

She and I were on our own quests for beauty in different ways. I like to mold a good day out of the circumstances I find myself in. Writing poems in hospital waiting rooms, or reading on car rides to other city hospitals. Mum liked beauty in clothes and home decor.

I scolded the aide minutes before that mild turmoil of vomiting. “Remove that towel. Mum is done eating. The sick must have pleasantness around them. There should be flowers there.” I pointed to the nightstand opposite to her side of the double bed. Then I walked away to plan my participation in the World Wetlands day concert two days later. Next I called an auntie who was to have visited that morning and told her that I would let her know when mum is better and they must meet. I was looking to unite two lonely ladies for chats and chai. Other things I will talk about in more pages. It will go on. Oh no. It will go on and she is gone.