Part 8: Like a Flower of the Night

Dec 2022-Feb 2023

On December 19, 2022, Bakul developed a wheezing problem. I immediately gave her the nebulizer, and there was a slight improvement. 

Anand arrived from Charleston on December 20. She was still wheezing. Anand saw her condition and decided immediately to take her to the hospital. They saw her asthmatic condition and started her on high-dose intravenous steroid injections. This treatment continued till the end of December. She had lost her appetite. She would not eat or drink fluids. Parsh and Anand both tried to spoon-feed her, but she would take in very little. Her wheezing could not be fully controlled. Anand suggested that the hospital should do a CT scan of her lungs. They did and found she had pneumonia in her right lung.

Intravenous steroid treatment was stopped. In its place, an intravenous antibiotic treatment was started. In about a week, her wheezing stopped, and the pneumonia was being controlled. However, she was still unable to take in much food or drink. She was getting weaker and weaker.

On January 11, the hospital discharged her and sent her to a rehabilitation hospital for physical therapy. Here, they could not do physical therapy, saying she was too weak to do PT until she got some strength. She was asked to intake a good amount of food and drinks such as Glucerna and Ensure.

Parsh, Meena, and Anand tried repeatedly to feed her and give her Ensure or Boost drinks, but she would hardly drink half a bottle. Maya came up from Brazil and mainly was with us, sitting near her Bba’s bed.

We decided to bring her home, and on February 2, we did so in an ambulance. The hospital provided an adjustable bed. A nurse would visit daily to check her vitals because she was now a Hospice patient.

Chetan, Priti, Hiten, Nani, Suraj, Chandni, Anita, Priya, and other members of our family traveled from across the country to see her and sat by her side. Our friend Jyoti flew in from Florida, where she was on vacation, to see her and then fly back. A few days later, on a Friday, Priti asked her many questions. The bed was adjusted so she could sit and answer questions in her extremely feeble voice. Priti produced a video of this interview.

Not long after this interview, she became very weak and motionless and lay in bed with closed eyes. Her primary care physician, Dr. Katherine Willey, came to see the patient she loved. When she was leaving, I went with her to the door and asked if she would recover. The doctor said that would not happen as she had become too weak to recover; when she said so, she had tears in her eyes like I did.

On the evening of February 12, I was in the room standing by her bed. Suddenly, I remembered what Jasmine, the lady who came to give her shower daily before she went to the hospital, had told me. I lowered my face near her left ear and said, 

“Dear dear, hear me please. I love you very much. If you want to go, go and not worry about me. Our kids, grandkids and Dr. Willey will care for me.” I  kept on repeating these words in her ear. Her left eyelid opened; there was pure love in the way she looked at me. She slowly pulled her right arm from underneath her blankets. She touched my face and moved all over it gently like the flower of the night, as Tagore had described. Her hand dropped, and her eyelid closed.

The next day, on February 13, her soul flew away, enveloped by her karma, love, last desires, and relationships she had formed throughout her long life. Her funeral service was held on February 17 and was attended by about 200 friends and loved ones.

My sons and others paid a loving tribute to their mother. One sentence that touched my heart in these tributes was the following by Parsh:

“ I guess we are all destined for a million rebirths. A million rebirths is a small price to pay for loving mom.”