When life itself is on the line

In these corona-infested times, besides the gloom and the nervousness, there have been some incidents that have been uplifting -- stories of courage and exceptional kindness, stories where one has put one's own life at risk to save others. And there have been others that have forced one to stop, take a step back and ponder about the deeper meaning of our existence and about why we live and how we die.

Who can forget that young Mumbai hospital doctor who took off his PPE kit and risked getting infected in order to try to revive a dying corona patient.

Or that young Assamese engineer attached to the Assam Bhawan in Delhi who performed the last rites of a person who he had never met in real life. Mr. Saikia from Bokakhat had gone to Delhi for the treatment of his wife, who was a cancer patient. Both of them tested positive for Covid and were hospitalised. Mr. Saikia's condition worsened and he died, while his wife was still in isolation. As they had no one else in Delhi to help them, the young engineer took it upon himself to go and look for Mr. Saikia's dead body that had gone missing from the hospital, managed to trace and retrieve it from a morgue several days after death and then do his last rites, all in the midst of this lockdown.

Much earlier on there was this old lady in Italy who was gasping for life but happily agreed to forego the use of a ventilator in order to save a younger person's life, saying, 'I have had a beautiful life!'

The virus is more or less under control in Europe now and things are returning to normal. When I spoke to my 70 year old friend Ingrid in Germany about it recently she said that while she was grateful that she has remained healthy and well through the troubled months and was happy now that she could go out and do some of the things she enjoyed doing, like play tennis or attend English classes, she regretted the months that had been taken away from what was left of her life by the total lockdown. She had worked hard all her life and had many plans about what she wanted to do as a retired person. As such, losing a few months did make a difference.

My Irish friend Ucki's problem was similar. She too had survived the difficult phase of lockdown etc.

'Hope you are keeping yourself safe and not exposing yourself to any unnecessary risk,' I  asked her, knowing that she was a senior citizen with lots of other health problems.

'Yes, I am being careful,' she replied, 'but I wonder sometimes what sense it makes to take so much trouble to not die from Corona, only to then go and die from a heart attack or from cancer. What difference will it make to die from one and not the other? Is death due to Corona inferior in some sense to death due to cancer? If not, then why bother so much? Would it not make better sense for me to just go out and enjoy the summer and do the things I want to do -- the things that make me happy -- and not have to hole myself at home and take endless precautions against the corona virus simply because I am a senior citizen?'

It was tough to find something to say  in response to that.  For I did understand what she was talking about. It reminded me of the time Stephan was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The news had come as a big shock; not just that, we were also told that he did not have a lot of time left. But Stephan did not quite understand what that meant, or perhaps he tried not to. Therefore his wish was to concentrate on the treatment first and leave doing everything else till later when he would be better. But the doctors had given us no hope; his treatment was only palliative -- they were treating him only to manage his illness, not to cure him. It took me a while to come to grips with what the doctors were trying to tell us -- it was shattering to understand that a time would never come when Stephan would be better.  That was it, there would be no time after this, once I understood that, I tried to make sure that we did some things that Stephan liked doing, like going for concerts or meeting up with friends, even while his chemotherapy was on, as long as we could. We even went on a lovely cruise that we had been planning for ages. Stephan was always initially a bit hesitant, he was getting weaker and did not always feel up to the extra exertion; he needed a lot of persuasion; but once we went ahead and got going, he really enjoyed those outings and meetings.

Today, I keep asking myself what would have happened if this corona pandemic had struck one year earlier; then there would have been no way for us to go out and do any of the things we had done together -- things that had made him happy and have remained as wonderful memories for me. Stephan and I would have had to stay put at home; his treatment would have continued, I suppose, but there would have been very little else to look forward to, very little else to feel happy about being alive for.  What sense would it have made for him to continue to live, just so that he could continue to be treated? How would I have motivated him, or myself, to keep carrying on? What would we have talked about besides the test reports, the sugar counts and BP levels? Living like that, would he have died even before he was dead? Then it would have no longer made any difference what the cause of death was -- cancer or corona.

Looking back I also realise how correct Stephan was in claiming that his generation had had the best time any generation had ever had in the history of our civilisation; he felt that the prosperity, peace and high standards of life that Germans have enjoyed in the last decades was not sustainable and that things were bound to change and give way, soon. Although he had not quite predicted corona, he knew that the world could not remain the same. How right he was! Given all that has happened this year, it is hard to know when this current state of flux will settle  and how things will look at the end of it all... but one thing is certain -- that certain familiar world of just a few months back will never return.