Its one day away from being 7 months since Maama’s passing.

Things have somehow and somewhat normalised for everyone. I’m still away from home and the distraction that serves me here has been terribly therapeutic. However, there are painful moments now and then when an elderly patient I’ve cared for passes and that familiar pain returns. But I suppose I could say that the lessons I’ve learnt and the experience I’ve gained taking care and letting go of Maama serves me well time and time again.

Maama was strong-willed. She had rock-solid determination. Whatever she put her mind to, she would hold on to. If she decided something was wrong, she would hold on to it with the firmest grip I’ve seen. Maama absolutely loved listening to the radio. I remember the small black radio she had before the last grey one. She would spend the majority of the day listening to it; especially recipes, health-awareness programs and the news. She was extremely health conscious and she would recall to us bit of healthy advice she had heard over the radio. I suppose that is how she her aversion to margarine, butter and cheese began. I remember that I was very small and Kaafa brought some cake from the bakery and she retorted, ‘Hoon. Bataru alhaafa huri ethivaruthakeh genaee dho. Nuvaane bataru alhaafa huri ehchehi thihaa varah kaakah’. It sounds so comical now, how stubborn she was. She avoided butter, margarine and cheese like it was poison, for the years to come. Every time I offered her any food that even sounded like it had either of those three things in it, she would respond the exact same way. 

‘Hoon. Bataru alhaafa huri ethivaruthakeh genaee dho. Nuvaane bataru alhaafa huri ehchehi thihaa varah kaakah’.

An aversion to salt also stemmed from similar circumstances. I must have been very young when Maama was diagnosed with high blood pressure and began taking medications for it. I can very clearly recall how she spoke about the importance of dietary modification in controlling high blood pressure; something I keep telling my patients, but in vain, every day or so. She was telling us about how you are supposed to put some salt in Laigen Kaa Ehchehi but no salt whatsoever in rice or Roshi. Thinking about it now makes me believe that her firm belief in this habit must have stemmed from a radio program as well. Because if Maama heard it on the radio, no one, not even her children, could shake her belief. I guess the strictness and rigidity with which Maama adhered to this habit as well as her compliance to taking medicines on the dot is how she survived, so well, for so long. I remember how she placed the dhigu gulha, vah gulha and dheburi dhekula gulha in her left hand, took each tablet one by one and swallowed it with one gulp of water each. I also remember the face she made when one tasted bitter.

When Maama was admitted at the hospital last year, I can recall how swollen her arms and legs were. I remember how heavy she was because of the swelling and how hard it was to even prop her up to adjust her pillow. At this point she was not given a feeding tube and we were struggling to feed her even 3 spoons of porridge. At this point the Dr had asked us to give her egg whites in an attempt to relieve the swelling. Feeding something as easy to swallow as porridge and soup was already such an arduous task and it was 10 times harder to feed her something she had to chew before swallowing. I remember how the tiffin box that was delivered to the hospital would go home with each container still full because she was unable to eat and I’d tell mom how I’d spent the entire duty convincing her to keep eating. Maama was exhausted and cranky and I had gotten hopeless. But this one day, after she refused to eat the 4th spoon of porridge I held her arm up to her face and showed her how swollen it was. I told her the swelling wasn’t going to go away if she doesn’t eat and that the Dr had said that the only way the swelling would go down was by eating egg whites. I gave up and went on to pack her tiffin box and she said, ‘Bis dheebala’. Those were the happiest words I had heard all day! The tiffin box contained chopped up hard boiled egg-whites of 3 whole eggs and she ate spoon after spoon after spoon until there was none left. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing but I remained mum and savoured the moment. No one can shake Maama’s beliefs. She was so sick and so out of breath with the Pulse Oxymeter reading as low as 69% at times and yet she finished 3 whole eggs because she put her mind to it.

That’s my Maama! The most hard-headed, most stubborn and most strong-willed person I’ve ever met.