20th November 2015 was the day Maama was shifted to the High Priority Ward from her Private Room. When I arrived at her bedside at 8 am that morning, I remember that Maama was in a pink hospital gown, with wires, tubes and blood-stained plasters attached to her, and a cannula on her right leg. I also remember that Maama had her eyes closed and mouth open; struggling and gasping to breathe. She had a Venturi Mask on with 60% Oxygen, and even that was evidently inadequate in providing her the Oxygen she needed.

I stood next to her and fixedly watched the Oxygen Saturation level on the monitor tirelessly. Every time the level went below 91% the monitor would sound the alarm and my heart would sink. I remember it feeling like a punch in my gut and it almost sent me reeling every time. Maama lay almost comatosed and I had to shake her and call her to wake her up to get the Oxygen Saturation to pick-up.’Maama. Please stay awake for me. Don’t fall asleep. Please’, I pleaded. Every time I called her she would momentarily and sluggishly open her eyes and lift her eyebrows.

I also remember the nurses hurriedly ushering me away from her bedside, a while later, because her condition worsened further. I stood watching and wallowing in my helplessness as they drew the curtains around her.

10 minutes later, a doctor emerged from Maama’s cubicle and asked me to make the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life. I think having to make such decisions about people you love dearly only comes by very rarely, if not never. And Maama, was one of the dearest people of them all.

‘She is eventually going to go to respiratory arrest. We are going to shift her to Intensive Care now. You need to decide whether you want to put her on the ventilator or not … and you have to make that decision now’, she said.

I knew Maama deserved any and every effort that we could make to get her better and so I didn’t have an inkling of doubt in my mind of what needed to be done. But I also knew  it wasn’t entirely upto me to decide on what Maama needed. She had 4 children, including my mother, who needed to call the shots too. ‘Give me a moment’, I told the doctor and made the necessary calls. None of them, fortunately, had thoughts that went astray from what I felt too. And so it was decided. It was decided that she was going to be intubated and ventilated, in a very last and helpless yet hopeful attempt to make her get better.

At 3 pm the same day, Mom, my husband and I watched  as the nurse and the attendant moved Maama into the ICU. We stood in silence as the massive ICU door closed behind them, and I realised things were out of my hands now. It felt like a massive void .. like something was forcefuly seized from me. I felt purposeless and empty. I looked at my mom and saw the confused expression on her face too and realised she too feels the same way.

We both knew we had already heard Maama’s last words and that the next time we saw her, she wouldn’t be able to speak again.