Endings

Atti's dying.

D called me today while I was in the middle of wrestling on the floor with
Arizona. It's not exactly news, she's been dying for a long time; but it's
still a shock. D asked me not to ruin my mother's day since "there's nothing
she can do; she'll just get worried."

Atti's not able to speak coherently anymore. She just keeps answering yes
to questions to get people to shut up. She hasn't been eating or really
drinking for a couple of days. D says that if you ask her if she wants to
eat or drink something, you can get her to drink a few sips of water or eat
a few tiny chews of food, but not much more. I just wonder if she's just
conciously deciding to kill herself by slow starvation or her body is just
shutting down because her mind is tired of fighting. It doesn't seem like
I'll ever see her lucid again. I take it that D & N are not going to put her
on a feeding tube. She's always been very concious of her dignity. Right now
she's got round the clock nursing care, but D still sleeps in her room. She
still wakes up at night, afraid and not knowing where she is.

She's had cancer for two years and change. It will be three years in
November, if she lives that long -- which I severely doubt. It's not the
first time she's had cancer either; she's had it twice before --- uterine
cancer & breast cancer. The lung cancer she has now is killing her.

Soon it will be time for my ironic smoke I bitterly decided I would have. I tried to gain a smoking habit back in college my senior year because it gave me something to do with my utter misery. (Another story altogether) . But I was a horrible addict, and just when I started getting used to inhaling the smoke, I quit. I never really got used to the way your index fingers stink after you hold a cigarette in your hand. I noticed that my chest felt like it was constricted by bands when I was lying in my bed at night. I was afraid I'd really start liking it. I'm sure my father still keeps a pack in the glove compartment of his car -- an occasional help to stay awake. Tata smoked for many years and lived far longer than my nonsmoking Ajji. Ajja smoked heavily for many years, and Ravi does too. Atti, as far as I know, never smoked a day in her life, but lives in one of the most polluted metros in the country. My mother says Atti has the cancer gene from her mother's side of the family.

I remember walking down the long long hill in Schenley Park one year as part of The Race For the Cure on Mother's Day. I remember asking her why we were doing this, and she said, "Several members of our family have had breast cancer." She never really said who.

D just called Manju who called me to talk to my mother.