Mother, Please Leave!

Maya Thakuri

A sudden, disgusting smell fills the room whenever my mother, who is nearing eighty-six, enters. My fourteen-year-old son Manis, twelve-year-old daughter Sumi, and my wife Manvi screw their noses up, looking meaningfully at each other. I find myself in a state of discomfort. 

Against my better judgment, I shout at her, “Mother, why don’t you go back to your room and just lie down?” 

As soon as I finish, Manvi adds, “Yes, Mother. Why do you want to sit here with these kids? You’d better relax in your room.” 

On hearing this, Mother, with not a word of protest, looks straight at me. Distressed profoundly though, I get to see the agony in her sorrowful eyes, and so I have a hard time keeping my composure intact. Mother, in her frailty, turns round and heads towards her room.

I can understand that my mother would like to sit with us watching the TV and listening to our chatter. She also would love to bask in the warmth of a family get-together. But for almost a year now nothing to her liking has happened in my house. Her pitiful condition breaks my heart, but I am powerless. Despite the best intentions, I am neither in a position to fulfill her wishes nor to offer any happiness to my mother, my life-giver. 

As often as not, I end up reproaching myself. 

I know very well how, in the past, my mother not only had to undergo physical hardship but also had to endure immense mental agony to bring up and educate me, a fatherless son. Things didn’t end there: she had her hands full even in bringing up my children and in running my household affairs over so many years. 

As we both, my wife and I, had jobs, we were financially able to send our kids to private schools despite renting an expensive four-room apartment in Baagbazar, one of the most expensive rental areas in  Kathmandu. 

But it has almost been a year now since my wife Manvi left her job and stayed back at home, babysitting my mother. 

My friends are always waxing lyrical about the way I have taken care of my mother. 

“Gokulji, indeed, you are very fortunate to be able to look after your frail, invalid mother. And just take a look at us, much as we’d like to, we are not in a position to look after our parents.” I hear them heaping compliments on me. 

Who doesn’t like to hear such words! But it is only a man of my sensitivities who can understand the burden that not only I but the whole family is obliged to bear to look after my ailing mother.

Sometimes, I have the habit of taking myself back to my childhood when my mother’s life was interwoven totally into mine. Destined as my mother was to face the austerity of an unexpected widowhood in the very bloom of her youth, I wonder how much she had to struggle to subdue her desires and aspirations. I smolder and squirm deep within me when I think about those episodes in her life. I feel rotten and ashamed when I think of my mother, who is slowly ignored in my house because she has been struck by paralysis. I am consumed with a sense of guilt and remorse whenever I think of how she worked her fingers to the bone to bring me up and to educate me properly by standing steadfast against all kinds of insults meted out to her even by her own brothers-in-law. Despite all the sacrifices she has made for my sake, my mother has no place in my family today. And here I am, brazenly obliged to accept everything as ‘normal’. 

The incident occurred some fourteen months ago. Mother suddenly fell down as she was getting out of bed one morning. Manvi, on hearing the loud crash, went rushing to Mother’s room. I ran after Manvi. 

Even as Manvi was trying to lift Mother up holding her by her hands, she exclaimed, “What’s wrong with her? Oh God, she can’t stand on her feet at all.” 

In my frantic efforts to make her stand up, I asked her, “What’s happened to you, Mother? What’s wrong with you?” 

But all our efforts to get her on her feet were to no avail. 

We took her to hospital and got her examined. The doctors declared that it was a mild kind of paralysis. 

On the day she had returned home after two months of treatment, she was able to take a few slow steps forward although she hadn’t much control over her right hand and her right leg. That day, I was overwhelmed with joy to see my mother back home, recovered and healthy. 

But due to her physical shortcomings, a number of unexpected problems began to raise their ugly heads in my family. 

She could make no use of her right hand to eat her food. It was either I or Manvi who took turns feeding her. 

And the problem reached a crisis when we discovered she had lost control of some of her other faculties too. She began to lose control of her bladder and bowels, involuntarily discharging her urine and stool all over the place and in bed or in any place in the room. Because of the putrid discharge and the mess she made, the whole house smelled sickening. It was quite unbearable. 

So, we tried to hire someone who could launder her soiled clothes, but the response we received from all the washer-men was cold: “We would rather go hungry than do such a filthy job.” 

Manvi and I washed Mother’s clothes and cleaned the house. But the awful smell persisted. In the beginning, both of us had retched in the bathroom while washing her smelly clothes or giving her a bath. But eventually this stopped, maybe because we were slowly getting used to the smell though we still found it nauseating. My children too were suffering. As time passed, things came to such a pass that they even stopped eating properly.

“If this goes on like this, our children’s education will suffer. My ‘leave’ has all been exhausted. Now my only recourse is to apply for ‘leave without pay’. How are we to manage the living cost? How are we to sustain ourselves?” Manvi would complain and quibble in exasperation quite often. 

In fact, I too was in a state of mental distress because of my mother’s condition. I felt quite helpless. I was not in a position to do anything. There also were times when I reprimanded my mother very rudely. On hearing me admonishing her loudly, she would look at me, screwing up her forehead helplessly as her eyes filled with tears like in a little girl. The pitiable picture of helplessness would cause my heart to break, and my eyes filled with tears. 

Eventually, we forbade her from stepping into any other section of the apartment. We got into the habit of yelling at her: ‘Mother, please go back to your room and lie down.” as soon as we saw her stepping out of her room. Though she uttered no word of protest against our rude behavior, the sorrowful looks in her eyes told me a lot. 

For about two months now she has been up to some new antics. You know, of late, she has started sneaking out of the house furtively. Many times, we have combed the whole of the neighboring area whenever she has gone missing from her room. At last we find her, either lazing away under the shade of a tree or just ambling away in the middle of the busy road, trailing her right leg.

“Why do you bother us, Mother? I quit my job just to be with you at home and take care of you. You don’t realize how hard it is in a place like Kathmandu to earn a living and look after your medical expenses on the earnings of a single person. And to crown it all, you move out of the house anytime and without telling us. Oh! I am really sick of all this,” I hear Manvi fuming at Mother. 

From her recent behavior, I have reasons to believe my mother is slowly losing control over her other faculties too. Otherwise, my mother is not the type of a person to relish other people suffering for her sake.   

“Please try to understand, we will not be in a position to send our kids to school if I don’t start working again. Enough is enough. It’s time we found some way out,” Manvi complains almost daily. 

But what can I do? The weirder mother becomes the harsher the feelings between Manvi and me grow. 

Making matters worse, these days Mother has even got into the habit of taking all her clothes off and sneaking out into the street naked at the slightest opportunity. There are also times when I have to inform the police because I haven’t been able to find her in spite of looking for her all day. The piteous sight of my life-giver and the constant groaning of my wife and children adds to the downward spiral in the financial situation and has driven me almost to the point of insanity.

‘Oh my God, how pathetic and piteous the life of a person is, when he or she loses control over senses because of disease or old age! I guess death would be preferable to a life of misery in a situation like this.’ I feel this way whenever I see my mother in her pathetic condition. I am now beginning to feel that I too am becoming more and more despondent.

The other day, Manvi and I had quite a discussion about sending Mother to an old-age centre.

 ‘But what will the society’s reaction be if we send her to an old-age centre when we are here? How much would our peers and neighbors scorn at us?’ we thought.

Another point well worth pondering about was which ‘old-age centre’ in the world would ever accept my mother, given her miserable state! 

These days, I have also got into the habit of losing myself in thoughts, remembering a very heart-wrenching story that someone had told me many years ago. The story goes like this: 

A crooked old woman, apparently in her late nineties, was spotted sitting and crying near Pashupati Temple one afternoon. From her looks she appeared to be from a genteel background. Seeing her cry and remain all by herself, people gathered around her and asked who she was, but because she responded in a language of her own. No one could understand a word of what she said. Anyway, as it was getting dark the local people hurled her in an asylum. 

After some months what everyone heard in the asylum was that on the day of the incident she was asked by her son and daughter-in-law to sit near the Temple for some time with the promise that they would soon be back. But later that day she became aware that she had been deceitfully left to fend for herself.  

On hearing of this heart-wrenching incident that day, I couldn’t help reproaching the woman’s treacherous son from the core of my heart. But, today, when I reflect upon my own situation, I’m filled with a sense of empathy for the unlucky son. ‘How deep and painful must have been the wounds in his heart, having to leave his life-giver, his invalid mother, in a strange world? How much he must have reproached and censured himself?  How repentant he must have been, reflecting on his own sinful act? Or, did he come back later to the place to find his mother, regretful for his own misdeeds? Would I ever be able to breathe in peace if I too were to leave my helpless mother in a strange land?’ 

Questions of this nature keep running through my mind.

‘How can I bring my baby-like innocent mother back to sound health? How can I restore her health? Oh God, what do I do, now?’ 

Questions of this sort play havoc in my mind. Oh my God, how long can I remain a helpless spectator to the deteriorating condition of my mother and my family? 

Just the other day the landlord notified me, saying, “We can’t stand dirty people in and around this house, so will you please find another place?” 

This incredibly depressing condition of my mother is wearing me out and having a very negative impact on my lifestyle. 

But my mother, regardless of my mental conflict, remains lost in a world of her own, talking to herself, laughing and enjoying. 

Not long ago, my mother gently came into my room. 

“Mother, please go back to your room,” I snapped at her.  

Mother, without a single word, stood steady, gazing at me as usual.

I yelled at her again: “Mother, please leave…the room is stinking.”

On hearing my words, she simply gave a very winsome smile in my direction, puckering her face into a thousand crinkles. 

***

(Translated from Nepali by Damodar Sharma)