Light
My boots tap on the solid stone as I stride towards the bridge. Somehow, the tapping echoes off the wall of rock that is the mountain behind me, the two sounds combining to produce a sensation that feels like being in a concert hall. I want to think of something, anything else. I want to be distracted. But I cannot.
The final minutes were so undramatic. Anti-climactic, you could call it, even. Those monitors you see on TV? They beep exactly as they’re shown. Irritating, nagging, lifeless beeps at regular-ish intervals. They really get under your skin. There’s a part of you that secretly wants the beeping to stop, and then the rational side of you raps that part on the knuckles, hard. Have you forgotten what the beeping stands for? What it means for it to stop? You berate yourself for allowing the thought to enter your head. You wonder if you’re actually a bad person, a sorry excuse for a human being who wanted to prioritize personal convenience over a loved one, if even for a fleeting second? And then you’re jolted back to your present, as the beeps are replaced by that frightful, insistent sound, one you’ve come to associate with the last episode. No defibrillator, no frantic nurses. You know what had to happen has happened.
The approach to the bridge is emptier than usual. It’s a Sunday during winter break, after all. Behind me, the echoes of my tapping boots get fainter and fainter. The sun is barely up against the horizon, the sky an inky-blue sheet flecked randomly with red paint at the bottom. The river water flickers inconstantly in the steadily brighter light. The most ambitious fisherman of the day was already rowing his boat upstream, presumably hoping for a hefty catch which would let him buy cakes and cookies for his children this Christmas.
Cookies. Mom loved cookies. Any kind, but especially the ones you could get in fairs and festivals — I think she called them fortune cookies. The ones which would have little pieces of paper with messages printed on them in tiny, quaint lettering.
“These aren’t even your favorite flavor, Mom,” I used to protest. “Why are you buying them?”
She would deftly extract the paper from the wrapping and hand it to me. “That’s your fortune for the next year,” she would say every time, “so read it and remember it”. Then she would unwrap another cookie for herself and read her fortune too. My eleven-year-old self thought that she took it pretty seriously. Which maybe she did. I’ll never know.
“What did you get?” she would ask me, trying to peer at my paper.
“Doesn’t sharing your fortune with anyone make it invalid or something?”
“Of course not. Who gave you such ideas?”
“Ray from school told me.”
“He’s kind of dumb then. Show me what you got. Mine is ‘With your beloved, forever’.”
I hesitated. “It’s the same.”
“That’s supposed to be lucky,” Mom said. “It means that the two of us shall be together forever.”
I found this fascinating, and mildly reassuring. “Really?”
“Yep.”
More than the final minutes, it was the week before that was worse — in every manner. It was nothing much in the beginning. There were issues, but there are bound to be issues when sixty-year-olds and cocktails of immunosuppressors interact, with one kidney less to preside over matters. There was one routine check-up. Nothing. Then came the headaches and the dizziness. We went to the ER, got a shot of paracetamol, and came back. Life went on. The third time was when I knew that things were serious.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?”
The doctor lowered his rimless glasses to his desk and sighed, the resignation that comes with having to deliver bad news evident on his face. He looked at me as if he’d just seen me for the first time.
“Looks like multiple organ failure to me. The remaining kidney has given up. I’d say she has two more days.”
“Can’t we do anything? A transplant, or advanced facilities? I can pay…”
He put both his hands on the table, palms down. “I’m afraid not.” His tone was gentle. I felt like he had smacked me across the face with a steel whip.
Two days it was. And just like that, within the span of little more than a fortnight, I had lost both of my parents.
I once overheard Mom talking to Dad during a dialysis session. I was just outside the room, I couldn’t help it.
“You know that. If I could, I’d take your pain from you and bear it myself.” Her tone was wavering. She sounded close to tears.
Dad muttered something inaudible.
“I love you, honey. Don’t ever say things like that.”
More muttering I could not catch.
“You just have to say the word. You know I’d do anything. Anything. I mean it.”
It’s snowing now. Small, perfectly round, glassy pieces for now. It’ll pick up later, though. It always does. It’ll keep going till the entire bridge is smothered by a bright white blanket hiding all the blemishes beneath. I’ve almost reached the middle of the bridge, with the viewpoint in sight now. The sun is much higher now, and the intensity of its warmth compensates for the iciness of the snow. It feels strangely soothing. But maybe that is because I’m almost at peace with myself now.
Almost.
Dad was fifty-two years sober till that concert, a classical music affair with one of the finest pianists in the world playing Mozart. It was also his birthday.
“It’s scotch, Dad,” I’d said, waving the glass under his nose. “The best you can get in this country. One glass is all I ask you to try. First and last offer I’ll make.”
He’d taken it reluctantly and sipped it gingerly. Later that month he bought three bottles and put them in the kitchen. The following year he had a mini-bar set up in the living room. All while his debts were piling up. The more he gambled, the more he lost, and the more he drank.
“I have assets,” he’d say whenever Mom or I tried to point this out, and he’d get defensive. “I built a billion-dollar business from the ground. Don’t teach me how to live my life.”
Still, he’d promised to give up his drinks when Mom agreed to give him her kidney. He was sincere about it, too. For about three months. The day he came out of rehab, he’d started drinking again. It wasn’t in the open, but we all knew. We tried to stop it. And we failed.
The river waters continue their long, lazy march down south. The snowstorm has given way to a fine rain, which falls on my eyelashes as I stare out into the distance. My feet are at the very edge of the viewpoint. There is no railing: only the three-hundred-foot drop down into the inviting greenish-blue expanse of death. The breeze blows the rain away from my face, so that I can see more clearly, almost right to the riverbed. I unbutton my shirt and take a deep breath.
I should have told her, warned her. I should have known better than to trust the word of a drunkard and a gambler.
Revulsion, rage, despair, and a certain kind of self-loathing fills my insides.
Who am I fooling? I’m the one to blame. I’m the one who handed him his first drink. What kind of a son does that?
My resolve is rapidly dissolving as every inch of my being realizes what I’m about to do: the bile is trying to force its way up my gullet as I compel myself to look up, in the direction of the white snowy peaks visible in the distance. I need to act fast.
I jump.
