That which you most fear

My mother was practical about many matters, and death was one of them. She may have feared it, but she taught me not to. I grew up with what I think is a healthy attitude towards death. I don't see what there is to fear about it per se. It's not something one can somehow avoid. In a way, one actually spends one's life preparing for death. Macabre thought, you say? Only to those who don't think about it, I'm sure. You can't be so divorced from reality as to imagine that death will not come to you. It's the not knowing what follows that is scary, perhaps. The possibility that nothing follows, perhaps. Loss of control is difficult to handle, and the end of life is pretty much the loss of all control, generally speaking.

I don't fear growing old, either. And if you see me hovering endlessly at the edge of the pavement when crossing the road, you will know that I won't give traffic a chance to bear down on me so there's that taken care of.

The thing that I have actually truly feared for many years is cancer. Because of two reasons - there's no way to prevent it, and there's no way to cure it. This is not to say that it's led me to live life in a state of fluttery trepidation, but yes - if you asked me what I feared, this would have been the answer. I say "would have been" because even that fear has, in a way, been and gone.

I always thought in terms of cancer happening to me. And somehow, that was the one thing that I had subconsciously braced for. If it happens to me, I thought, such-and-such is what I will do. I never thought it would strike closer than close - that it would manifest itself in the one person closest in my universe of family, my elder brother. For those with more than one sibling and a larger circle of immediate family, this may not connect. But my parents have been no more for over 11 years now, and considering I shed a spouse along the way, it's been pretty much my only sibling, and his wife and son, who have been there for me. And with him stricken, I have not a clue what to do.

I sometimes feel a little surprised at this. I usually know what to do. I'm the girl who has a flashlight in her handbag and for many years toted along a screwdriver as well, just in case. I'm the one whom people call with questions, the one someone said is "better than Google". A "situation" generally has me thinking of solution first and reaction later. But this one has been a low tackle that has brought me down. I should have an answer, a solution, a way forward to help him with. Instead, I find myself groping in dark space where I simply cannot see ahead.

How do you deal with something like this? I don't know. There is no one answer. You take one day at a time; one chemotherapy session at a time; one uneventful night's sleep at a time; one birthday, one Ganesh Chaturthi, one Rakshabandhan at a time.

It feels like I have a fist clenched tight within me, and that if I let go I may fall to pieces. That if I unclench, it will all crash down and all I will be able to say is "More weight." At times I feel that at some level I've taken all that can be taken, and nothing can touch me any more.

But then a sparrow alights on the window, and another. They're looking for a place to build their nest. I rig up a little thingumabob for them and hope they will take up residence. A pair of pigeons seems to have occupied the box I'd left for them outside a bedroom window, and the female is apparently hatching. I don't look too closely, for it alarms them. My compost bin is thriving with little creepies. Ah, putrefaction! "Treat!" say the mynahs.

The sun shines. Somewhere I hear a bulbul. Where there is life, there is hope.