My mother is still alive, despite the fact that several hospice nurses told me with authority that she would be dead by now. She appears to me to be comatose, non-responsive, her pupils fixed and dialated. And yet she still breathes, and the blood vessel in her neck still throbs quickly.
The last book my mother finished reading before she slipped into her coma is called The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. Mom thought it was a strange book, not the normal mysteries or literary classics she's used to tackling. But at one point she took a pen to the book, and circled a passage. She told me to read it. Not now. But later. So I read it last night.
The passage refers to the death of the grandmother (Ammu) of a child named Rahel. Rahel watches Ammu get cremated.
"The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunched out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. The way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double."
The last book my mother finished reading before she slipped into her coma is called The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. Mom thought it was a strange book, not the normal mysteries or literary classics she's used to tackling. But at one point she took a pen to the book, and circled a passage. She told me to read it. Not now. But later. So I read it last night.
The passage refers to the death of the grandmother (Ammu) of a child named Rahel. Rahel watches Ammu get cremated.
"The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunched out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. The way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double."
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