Fragility of life
Enjoy every moment
(Image Courtesy: Google)
According to the Oxford Dictionary, fragile is
an adjective that primarily means easily broken, damaged, or
destroyed.
I think life is fragile. We don’t know what will happen
in the next moment. It is as delicate as glass and should be handled with care.
We often live in an illusion, thinking that name, fame,
status, family, property, and enormous wealth are the real success. But we
forget that we have come alone in this earth and will go alone, leaving
everything behind forever. Those whom we think have hurt us and loved us will
be left behind when we leave this world. So, there is no reason to be proud of
the achievements, as nothing is going to stay with us once we are out of this
materialistic world. Similarly, there is no reason to feel guilty and
demoralised for the failures, even as these will also not follow us out of the
world.
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Recently, I
have been reflecting on a lot of things in my life, like success and failures,
which I don’t have control over.
I have been visiting my paternal aunt (my father’s
sister) regularly at the cancer care centre, where she has been admitted for
the last month.
Today was different. Something hit really hard. I went
to her ward to meet her. She was looking pale today. Her face had shrunk to a
great level, like the muscles of her face were squeezed. Her teeth moved out of
her mouth. She did not hit 60, but she seemed to be in her 80s. She was
breathing heavily as if she had run a sprint a few minutes back.
I asked her whether she was feeling okay. But, she could
not answer my question as if she were counting a few hours of her existence on
earth. I could not control my tears then. For a few minutes, I completely froze
upon seeing her critical condition.
After a few minutes of crying, secretly sitting at the
corner of her ward, I gathered the courage to face her. I started sharing my
everyday stories with her, but in response, I did not get any reply from her. I
did not know whether she was able to process anything in her mind.
She was one of the
biggest supporters of my life who would cheer me up whenever I felt low. She
would pray to god for my success even when she was hospitalized.
Seeing her
count her last breath at the cancer care centre really made me feel disturbed
and restless.
The last few years have been really difficult for us;
for her, these were the worst. She was diagonised of blood cancer fourteen
years back. Since then, she had been fighting this battle with a brave heart
and strong willpower. She had been on medication till then, and living her life
freely without much thinking of the disease.
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This deadly disease had never affected her mind the way
anyone could have thought. All the credit goes to her indomitable spirit.
For the last two years, she had been going through
chemotherapy. I could not count how many times she might have visited the
hospital for taking the saline and costly injections.
Regularly, I would go to the hospital to meet her, but I
had never seen her give up on her life. Despite these medications and
therapies, she would always ask about my well-being and show a world full of
positivity.
Being a devotee of Saibaba, she accompanied my parents
and me to Shirdi in Jan 2024. We would never have imagined that a patient would
travel around 30 hours by train to have a glimpse of Saibaba. Such was her
devotion and faith in him that had made her navigate these difficult times in
life.
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I don’t know
how I would process this loss in the future.
She is in her last stage, and one thing that made me
feel relieved is that the care given at the centre is unmatched. She is at one
of the best cancer care centres in India. Maybe she would leave this world in
an environment where all the care facilities are provided.
At this point, I feel numb, unable to think that I would
not be able to recharge her mobile this time, as I used to do for her. I would
miss her call at late night to console me.
Life has really shrunk to a few countable people for me,
and losing her would be a difficult one, as I would lose one of my real
supporters forever.
I would pray god to provide her a peaceful life wherever
she goes. A life with fewer sufferings, as she had seen a lot in this birth.
Her story of life had taught me to never give up in any
situation. She had also taught me to cling to hope when nothing seems to be in
favour in life.
I will miss her as the person in this materialistic
world, but her life stories will always inspire me to move forward despite
ordeals and tribulations.
She is a true warrior.
SWETA SARANGI
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
28–06–2026
