The nurse injected the concoction of toxins into his veins. He groaned, and I grimaced as I watched his pain express themselves on his tense, sunken and hollow cheeks. The syringe was as thick as a thumb, and as long as a pencil. The air was stale, wafting with the sour, sterile, sickly smell of the oncology ward.
"Daddy, be brave... Daddy, be strong..." The three year old's voice was so sweet, so soft, and moistened my eyes. She stroked his dad's arm gently, with such determination and care. I turned away, looked into the sunlight blazing in through the big, transparent windows of the hospital, hoping the sun would evaporate the tears. This sight, this smell, this moment... all too close, raw and emotional for comfort.
It's only been eight months since I last saw him. A friend I met by chance a few years ago, and who's not more than a few years older. Then, he was strong, handsome, and preoccupied himself day and night with affairs of the monastery in the mountains I frequented. Today, he has become so weak, so frail that I was almost afraid to hug him.
I gently patted him on the back, but words choked in my throat. What can you say to someone who has lost twenty kilos in the span of a few months without sounding condescending or pitiful? How do you take someone's pain away, when the morphine drips themselves are too slow to work? I smiled, felt my leg tremble and fidgeted with my fingers. Not a smile of happiness... but a nervous smile, hiding the sorrow and disbelief at seeing a friend disintegrate to such conditions.
His abdomen swelled with water, and with liquid that had some seeped into his lungs, his breathing was laboured. The chemo had worn him down, bit by bit, cell by cell, strand of hair by strand of hair. He spoke little in the hours I was there, and when he did he sounded apologetic and sorry that he was wasting my time being with him. His arm was left with little but skin over bone, and his eyes were tired and heavy. The voice that once held such power, that spoke in rhyme and poetry, that once spoke about the way of the Dharma with such confidence and certainty, had become coarse, beaten and sorrowful. His young daughter's boisterous movements and cheerfulness was a great contrast, but brought much needed life and laughter into the hearts of the visiting relatives.
"How good it is to eat, to walk, to sleep well..." he said, remorsefully. Indeed, all these things we take for granted every day become painful struggles when you are bed-stricken. The best medicine, the best doctors, the best hospitals cannot take away the cancerous cells that have infested themselves deep inside. Do you give in? Do you give up? Do you keep on fighting, bear the pain, the humiliation and defeat of being reduced to nothing but a sordid heap of bone and skin?
These are questions that I have had to face for a number of years... in the life of my friend, and in my recently parted father. A question that too is haunting the relationship with my own mother. I watch... am forced to watch as they all grow tired and weak, sad and hopeless. I try to smile, try to laugh, to joke and poke fun at the inevitabilities and realities of life, sickness and death. I try to remember the teachings of the Buddha, to remind myeslf of letting go of attachments. But ultimately I can only watch, watch, and painfully watch as they slip away slowly from my fingers, out of reach, out of touch. Deep down, I mourn for my inability to change fate, to change the mysterious and illussive ways of the universe. What I would give to ease their pain, to share their burdens and blow away their worries and fears...
But what else can I offer but my tears?
