Mothers are special

All mothers are special, even when they are ‘awful’, and ‘hurtful’ and ‘mean’ . That’s why we are more than willing to forgive them and always love them no matter what.

According to me, Mothers’ Day , Father’s Day, Friendship Day and other such ‘special’ days are purely commercial, designed to spur sales of greeting cards, flowers, chocolates,etc. to show the person how special they are in your lives. So ordinarily, this is not something I would write about. But this year I would like to share a few things about my mum and what makes her special.

Early this year, in the first week of January, my mum was diagnosed with GBM. Like most abbreviations, these letters expand to cover a dark secret – in this case, GlioblastomaMultiforme. And it was found purely accidentally. With absolutely no symptoms of any kind my mother had no reason to visit a doctor and if the lid of a cabin trunk hadn’t fallen, we’d have dismissed her behaviour as age related degeneration.

My mum has this habit of ‘hiding’ things and her cupboard would always have things secreted away. You just had to poke around at the back, or sift through her pile of clothes and you would find an envelope of money, a bunch of keys or perhaps even a small jewellry box that she wanted to hide away till she put it back in its proper place which was an old cabin trunk.

The cabin trunk has been in my mum’s possession for the past 60 years and was used initially to store linen . Then, it morphed into a treasure chest where she literally stored all her precious stuff – her expensive saris, important documents, the few pieces of silver she owned and the jewellery that she wore regularly but didn’t want to keep in her bank locker or the cupboard.

One of my mother’s passions is tidying up. I’ve seen her spend innumerable Sundays tidying up the kitchen, cleaning out the fridge, sorting out the pantry, putting things back in her cupboard.

She also loved peeking into her cabin trunk and re-arranging stuff. But she insisted on poking her head into the trunk rather than lifting the lid and getting a clear view of what she was looking at.

The past few years, my mother’s vision has been diminishing as she has ARMD and can only see blurs in good light. But being stubboorn, she was rummaging deep inside the trunk when the lid fell on her head. It wasn’t surprising that she got a gash on her head but funnily enough my dermatologist father who actually has no faith in traditional medicine or homecures, told her to put a paste of turmeric on it to staunch the bleeding.

Later in the evening, when my mum complained of ‘feeling funny’ , they requested a neighbour to take her to the hospital. The wound was properly attended to and at my dad’s request, underwent a CT scan because she is 89 years old and was behaving quite oddly since late last year. The doctors found some shadow which was confirmed as a tumour after an MRI a few days later.

My mother being my mother wanted to know exactly what it was and asked my brother to leave the room while she spoke to the Neurosurgeon alone. She bravely listened to him while he gave her a prognosis of 3-6 months at best with or without surgery.

For three nights my mum was disturbed but then she decided to enjoy her last few days with her friends and family rather than waste them on endless waits at doctors’ clinics carrying out a pointless exercise.

My mother the fashionista

So believe it or not, she rang up all her friends and family and told them what was going on and prepared to make merry while they all came to visit. She got her hair washed at the parlor ( something which she had never done in all her life), her nails done and her wardrobe organised so that she could receive her visitors as she always did – well groomed and well dressed.

This reminded me of her motor accident 40 years ago when she was laid up in bed for three months in hospital. There again, she didn’t want to be seen in the unglamourous hospital gowns and I had to stitch up special clothes that could be worn by someone who had both arms immobilised in plaster cast!

My mother the organiser

Since my mother still had time before the tumour spread all over, she wanted to sort out her things. Especially what she wanted to give away. So every time I went to visit her, we would sort out piles of clothes – the ones which were of no use to her any more, the ones that she wanted to still wear, the ones that she wanted to give away .

Similarly, she sorted out her few pieces of jewellery. She got them repaired, repolished, restrung and kept away. There were certain pieces she wanted to gift to certain people and she made sure that she gave them away. Actually, she has been giving away things for quite a while to friends and family especially when they appreciated anything. Or if she found something that they liked or she thought they would like.

My mother the inveterate shopper

My mother always carried a carry bag (pishwi) in her purse or in the car long before it became fashionable to do so because she loved shopping. She could spend hours looking for something she liked, something for someone she thought they would like, something just because she needed to keep gifts in the house to give at the last minute, something just because she couldn’t resist the shopkeeper’s charm/persistence.

She would buy fruit at traffic lights and souvenirs at remote spots.

My mother the optimist

My mother is the eternal optimist who always thinks that there is a parachute waiting for her when she jumps off a cliff. This never-say-die attitude has always helped her in difficult times and she can’t understand why people wallow in self -pity. Of course she had her times when she played ‘victim’ but by and large she was always there to help everyone out and get back on their feet.

Even now whenever I call her to ask how things are, she says it is the best day of her life!

My mother the extrovert

While my father is getting more and more reticent as age advances, my mother’s energy continues to remain boundless. Ever ready for a good time she has now re-named herself ‘Eveready Battery‘.

She always loves having people over and I remember waking up to complete strangers on our breakfast table. It would be a colleague of my father’s who had some time to spare before his train or someone who had some time to kill before he/she/they had to show up at work. Similarly, she was game to cook up a meal for visitors who landed up way past our bed time. For her, any meal at which anyone other than family ate at her table became a ‘party’! So she had countless ‘parties’ with us scurrying around to help.

Even today when she hears about a friend’s visit, she plans what she’d like to give them to eat!

My Mother the Busy Bee

My mother has always been busy. She would knit, sew, cook and clean. She worked as a teacher and even when my parents were in a remote Saudi Arabian town, she taught the few Indian kids there. She has helped me sell my garments when I ran a small garment business and she has run her own video library in the days before Internet. She always wanted to do something and one of her major regrets is that she didn’t work a corporate job.

She can work 24 hours at a stretch and can literally move mountains with her determination and will power. Even today, though she has to be guided, she goes for a wallk around the house and garden, goes for a drive every evening and insists on eating with the rest of the family.

Of course, my mum has some very annoying traits like always wanting to get the last word. She can be quite judgemental, argumentative and stubborn. She can be overbearing and sometimes hysterical.

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These past months I’ve visited her more than I did all these years knowing that a time will come when she won’t be there for me to visit. But as she said, she has reserved her seat but the final call has still not been announced.

I used to call my mum every day just to chat, to bicker, to grumble, to gossip, to ask for recipes, for some information, some advice and sometimes just to have a good laugh. These days my calls are infrequent because she can’t use the phone. Smart phones do not cater to the visually impaired. And often when I ask to talk to her, she says she is ‘busy’ and asks for me to call later.

The past few times I visited her weren’t exactly her good days: she was sleepy, crotchety and cantankerous. She talks coherently but often lapses into illogical conversation and on her bad days she can talk non-stop, blabbering with a fixed thought on loop.

Unfortunately, I cannot spend more than a few hours and days if I am lucky) with her these days. Unknowingly, out of habit, I often reach out for my phone to call her, just to hear her voice. But, I see her number on top of my Speed Dial and put it down knowing that she won’t answer.

Luckily, my brother and his wife are there to look after her and keep her comfortable. Luckily, she has my dad too by her side. And luckily she is at home with 24 hour care.

Hope you enjoy today and every other day for as long as you can.

Ciao