Maama had being admitted numerous times in the past, and some of those times were near misses.

2010 was, likewise, a near miss. After being very ill she fell into a coma and was unresponsive for a week or so. The family was urged to brace for the worst. At that time, I was in Malaysia in the midst of my 3rd year of medical school and I remember getting a call from my uncle. He simply said that Maama was very ill, in a coma and that he thought I should come home immediately. I called Mamma right after I spoke to my uncle, and I saw right through her high-pitched account of how Maama was. Mamma was definitely, 100% worried and she would instinctively try any and all acrobatics to keep me from getting worried. I knew Mamma so well and absolutely love her to bits for it. However, I was only re-assured of what I needed to do.

The next day, I submitted a letter to the university requesting for leave of 1 week from school to see Maama. A few hours later, I was seated in the dean’s office after being summoned regarding my letter. The dean was an authoritarian man of no-nonsense. In the presence of two other faculty members he attempted to shun me for requesting for leave and proceeded to give me an ultimatum of ‘either continuing to go to school and become a doctor or take the leave and fear being expelled’. He said I needed to ‘get my priorities straight’ and that my primary focus should be my education and not whiling away my time by taking a leave. He said I needed to choose between my future or my family.

Did he think this was a hard decision to make?

‘Sir. If you think this is a hard decision for me to make then you must be very very mistaken. My grandmother is irreplaceable and the love I have for her is immeasurable. And you’re very wrong to even assume that I wouldn’t choose family over my education. I would never forgive myself if I don’t make it in time’, I remember retorting. Slightly embarrassed with the tears rolling down my cheeks, I insisted on him offering me and option other than the ultimatum. At that point, I was ready to pack up, leave and never come back if it came to that. I don’t identify myself as a confident person but I didn’t have an inkling of doubt about leaving. I was raging inside.

I left his office with his verbal acceptance of my leave application and I was provided with the option of deferring the classes I was going to miss to when I got back. I did it. I honestly didn’t know what came over me, and I think even the dean was taken aback at how upfront I was. I definitely was.

The next day, I was on a plane heading home. I remember getting home, dumping my luggage and heading to the hospital. There wasn’t a moment I wanted to lose. When I got to the hospital Maama was in a bad state. There were tubes attached to her and she looked weak and withered. Before I went into see her, my mom warned of the state that Maama was in, and yet I wasn’t prepared enough. I remember calling out to Maama and she slowly opening her eyes and lifting her eyebrows similar to how she did during the few days before she passed away. I remember that terrible feeling in my gut and bawling my eyes out in the corridor. Was she going to make it? Was she going to die? I was young, weak and feeble and unprepared.

I am grateful that when Maama got sick this time I was able to be around her and make the shots regarding her care. I am thankful that I was able to be with her through it all; before she got sick, in the ambulance when she was being taken to the hospital, with her in the emergency room, in the ward, room and high priority ward always right next to her and with her in the ICU even when I knew it was only inevitable that she would pass away in a day or two.

I am grateful that I was given time. During that time I was somewhat able to accept that I had tried my best to bring Maama back and that when it came to letting her go, I was able to let her go. I am grateful that during that time, I was able to get some kind of closure.

‘Kokko ah ingeytha? Uduga innaane varah bodu singaa tharieh. Ethariakee varah reethi ali gadha tharieh. Fathis gadeega ethari ereema mulhi than alivaane. Ekahala dhevana tharieh neennaane. Ethari fennaanee hama ekani fathihu heylaa kudhinnah’.

‘Kokko. Do you know about a very big star in the sky? It’s beautiful and bright, and lights up the whole place! There is no other star like it! It’s only witnessed by people who wake up before sunrise‘.

I must have been 5 or 6 years old at that time, and I remember being extremely intrigued. How was such a thing possible? It sounded mythical and almost magical from how she described it! It almost seemed implausible; a star so big and bright that the other stars were regarded negligible compared to it? I wanted to know more and inquisitively started throwing questions.

‘How big is it? Does this star come up any other time? What colour is it? Why does it come up? Why is it so big? Is it magic?’.

Maama laughed away my inquiries and prompted me to quickly finish my lunch. I had just gotten back from school and she was yet to give me a bath and get me ready for my Quran lesson before I was allowed to watch TV at 5 pm. 5 pm was cartoon time and I always expectantly looked forward to 5pm on the dot. But on this day, something else intrigued and interested me more. I wanted to know more about this magical star!

‘Ehenvejjeyaa maadhamaa fathihu 4 jahaa iru Kokko jeheyne Maama goveema heylan. Heyleema ethari fennaane. Heylaigen buh thashi boegen Fathis namaadhu ves kuranvaane’.

‘If you want to see the star,  you need to wake up when I call you at 4 am tomorrow morning. I’ll show you the star and then you can have your glass of milk and do the early morning prayer with me. Okay?’.

Friday morning at 4 am and Maama didn’t have to call me twice to wake me up. I was thrilled and a little bit nervous at the same time. I remember Maama holding my hand and guiding me through the Gifili and out near the freshwater well. I remember the absence of noise, except the distant sound of a boat leaving the harbour, and the chill in the air. It was so serene and so tranquil and everything stood transfixed. Almost like it was just the both of us in a big world. I had never been up so early in my life .. and I’ve never before had a reason to.

‘Kokko. Mathi balaala bala’

‘Kokko. Look up’

I looked up and there it was, in all its glory. The biggest, most beautiful and brightest star I had ever seen. The other stars were merely just speckles compared to how magnificent and phenomenal it was. It lit up the entire place in an almost magical manner and I was astonished.

‘Fajuru Thari’

‘Venus’, she said.

I looked at Maama, and 23 years later I am realising that Venus wasn’t the biggest, most beautiful and brightest star that I’ve ever seen.

It was Maama. She was the one who lit up the place with her radiating unconditional love. And even the brightest star in the sky is negligible compared to her radiance.

Is it selfish of me to not want the year to end?

It’s 11.00 pm on the 31st of December 2015 and no part of me wants the year to end.

27 years of my life have been spent with Maama in it … with me following closely behind her. I’ve been almost like her shadow. Observing her every move and being guided by her. I’ve watched her pull out weed shoots from the garden, pollinate flowers, how gracefully she crosses the Olhi, how she took the knife and scraped the bark of the Bageecha tree and applied it on my cuts and wounds, how she soaks her finger tips in a small pot of water and cut her nails with her little black knife, how she’s made my glass of milk specifically with 4 tablet spoons of milk powder and how she has always literally pulled me up whenever I fell. Every time I got lost, I’ve always found my way back because she has been steering and guiding me.

What use is a shadow now?  What is it’s purpose?

No part of me wants a year without Maama.

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.

‘We’ve done everything we can do. I’m very very sorry’.

4th December 2015. Even with the best doctors and the best possible medicines Maama wasn’t getting better. Quite the opposite actually. Her lungs had failed, her kidneys had failed, she had hypoxic brain injury, the infection she had run rampant and now she was bleeding from everywhere. Attempts were made relentlessly to rectify that state that she was in. She was on a ventilator, getting dialysed, being transfused with Fresh Frozen Plasma and getting the most potent antibiotics available. But it wasn’t working.

Maama persevered every single time before.

‘Gadha alhaa masakkai kuraa meehakah kaamiyaabu nuvaane evves kameh noannane’.

‘Nothing is quite impossible for people who work hard towards achieving what they want’, she told me so many times over and over again. Maama was true to her word and she got right back up every single time before. Life threw a fractured spine, Pneumonia, Sepsis, a coma and failing lungs at her and she dealt with those head-on and got right back up. But why not this time?  Maama. Are you giving up?

Until that day, during the two measly hours I got to see Maama at the ICU I used to whisper and repeat her exact words to her, hoping it would be some kind of motivation and solace for her to get better.

‘Gadha alhaa masakkai kuraa meehakah kaamiyaabu nuvaane evves kameh noannane ey Maama bunamennu? Rangalhuvaan Maama masakkai kurey ingey? Iraadha kurevviyyaa rangalhuvaane. Aharumen enmen mithiby Maama ah eheevaan’. 

‘Maama. You used to tell me that nothing is quite impossible for people who work hard towards achieving what they want, no?  You just need to work hard to do that okay? God-willing you’ll get better. We’re all here to help you do that’. I used to repeat these words hoping that she’d hear me, be able to hold on to my voice and hopefully follow it to the surface .. until the the day that I had to digest the fact that Maama wasn’t going to be able to do that.

‘We’ve done everything we can do. I’m very very sorry’. The doctor’s voice trembled as he said this. ‘I think it’s best if we give her Palliation now. Make her as comfortable as possible and lessen her pain. We’ll start painkillers so that she wont feel pain and keep her sedated so that she’ll be asleep’, he said. I looked at him, nodded and said, ‘I know .. we know that you’ve done everything you could have done to make her better. Now it’s time to make her comfortable.’. The lump in my throat made it hard for me to say those words. I knew we were giving up after strenuously trying to make her come back to us. I knew I was giving up.

It was tremendously difficult to contain my tears and to find some kind of strength and courage within me to shift my focus from getting her better to allowing her to go peacefully. I am unable to comprehend how I was able to stop pushing her to get better. Perhaps because I knew, deep down in my heart, that Maama’s time was up and that my perseverance would only make her suffer more.

Even with eyes welling up with tears I made sure my voice never trembled when I spoke to her after that day. If she knew that my heart was being broken into smithereens  that would just add to her suffering and I didn’t want that.

‘Maama dhen araamu kollaa. Evves kamakaa visnaane kameh neih. Hiyhama jassaalaa. Nidhaalaa’. 

‘Maama. Rest now. Don’t think about anything. Think happy thoughts. Sleep’, I told her.

Like every queen has her throne from which she rules her kingdom, Maama had one too.

Her balcony.

For 4 years before her demise, she’s ruled her kingdom from the 2nd floor balcony of her home. The balcony being on the 2nd floor wasn’t a hindrance to her. She inquired about people’s health, the price of bananas from the local market among other things from up there. Like I said, she was a queen. From her throne she could see almost everything; people who enter and exit the house, what the neighbours prefer in terms of groceries, new girlfriends and boyfriends, peculiar looking people possibly new to the neighbourhood, people’s smoking and Supari consumption habits and most importantly, what the neighbourhood cats have been up to.

The latter was our favourite past time. Every time a cat was in the vicinity Maama would call for me and both of us would simply just watch them. I remember there was an orange tabby cat that she found most fascinating. Every time she spoke of it there’d be a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. She’d laugh loudly and say, ‘This is an especially naughty cat. He eats leaves from the neighbours tree. As if that doesn’t suffice he goes on to vomit all of it on to the other neighbours roof.’. Ekkala Orenju Bulhaa is what we called him. If I wasn’t at home when the cats made an appearance, Maama would report back to me when I got home and say, ‘It is a pity that you weren’t around today.’.

I remember looking up, every time I left the house, to see if Maama was there. We’d both exchange funny hand gestures and make silly facial expressions. Sometimes the neighbours would look at us funny but we didn’t care! It was our thing. Without fail she’d also ask me when I was going to come back home and I’d say that I won’t be long.

By force of habit or not, I still look up at the balcony every time I leave the house, hoping that I’d see her on her throne … at least for one last time.

Kaafa was a smoker for well over half of his 89 years of life. He ate to his heart’s desire and lived a life devoid of worry. Yet, he’s never had any major health issues .. until Maama’s condition deteriorated.

A little over a week after Maama was intubated and put on mechanical ventilation, Kaafa’s condition deteriorated significantly. It appeared as though Kaafa had given up on life itself. He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t sleeping and neither was he conversing with anyone. Efforts to humour him were in vain.

Similar to Maama, he was wheeled off to the hospital and subsequently admitted for Urinary Retention, in the same hospital, in the same building that Maama was at. He was literally just a few minutes away from her. Was this destiny? Was this fate? Was this a higher power re-uniting soulmates? It was hard not to think so.

Every single day during the course of his admission, there wasn’t a moment that would pass without Kaafa asking about Maama. ‘Where is Maama? Is she getting better? Who is with her now? Does she talk? Is she able to eat? Doctors are looking after her, no?’.The same questions would repeat hour after hour, day after day. 

On the 4th of December 2015, Maama was put on palliative care only. This meant that it could be a few hours or days before Maama’s heart stops and she’s gone. This also meant that we needed to allow for Kaafa to get closure and say his goodbyes, if he was willing to, pronto.

‘I can’t bear seeing her in that condition. I won’t be able to take it’, was what Kaafa initially decided. With a little bit of moral support and persuasion he eventually decided to see Maama for one last time. We were not sure how he’d take it. Would he break down? Could his heart actually, literally, bear this much emotional pain? We weren’t sure of the consequences but we decided to comply with Kaafa’s decision and took him to see her anyhow.

We were stupefied.

Kaafa was wheeled close to Maama and he attempted to stand up but stumbled. The nurse then lowered Maama’s bed so that Kaafa could see her face, while seated. He looked at Maama’s face with a troubled expression yet with calmness and grace. He took her hand in his, to his forehead first and then kissed her hand ever so gently.

‘Okay. I’m finished. Let’s go back.’, he said.  When his wheelchair was moved back he quickly changed his mind and said, ‘I want to see her one more time.’. We complied and gave him the moments he needed. He looked at her face and a minute or two later said, ‘Okay. I’m done now. Let’s go.’.

I saw tears rolling down my mother’s face, as she quickly turned around wiping them off. I looked at my husband and saw the same on his face. I saw the nurse’s lips quiver. Even the Doctor attending to Maama turned around and walked away hurriedly.

What we just saw was the parting of soulmates.

‘Kobaa Maama?’

‘Where’s your Grandmother?’, Kaafa asks, 7 days since Maama passed on. 

With a lump in my throat I asked him where he thought she was. ‘At the hospital, no?’, he replied. ‘No Kaafa. It’s been 7 days since Maama passed away. Do you not remember?’, I broke the news yet again. Perhaps breaking his heart too, for the 2nd time that day.

He looked confused with troubled and wandering eyes. 

The both of them spent 60 odd years together and during the comparatively negligible lifetime that I’ve been around, I’ve never ever seen Kaafa so dazed, confused and troubled. 

‘Pray, Kaafa. Get better and pray. That’s what we can do now for her, no?’, I told a frail old man in a single hospital bed in the room in the house where he spent years upon years with Maama. I took his hand and whispered, ‘Be strong. Get better. Pray.’. He nodded and closed his eyes. 

‘Kobaa Maama?’, he asks.

Even in my earliest memories I was terrified of losing Maama. What would I do without her? Even as a child, I knew that I wouldn’t have meaning to my life if Maama wasn’t around. That I wouldn’t be able to take it. That if she passed on, I’d run away and disappear into a void. Wherever that is.

Maama was my saviour, my protector and my team. Unconditionally, she always took my side .. sometimes even at a disadvantage. Mamma being a single mother had tremendous burdens to bear and was usually away either studying or working when I was child. This meant that the hurdles Maama had to cross for me were minute and thereby, the adoration that emanated from her was limitless. This is also the reason why the memories of Maama that I can cherish are all beautiful and rich.

How was I to find meaning to a life without Maama?

I have persistently bargained with God to keep her in my life until all the major milestones in my life were reached .. and he did. I told God that I’d want her to see me reach my academic goals at school, get married to the man I love and come back home after 6 years of university as a doctor. Even with some very scary and trying moments, God was always able to bring Maama back home .. to me.

I think, God went a long way for me to answer my prayers to keep her safe and healthy. I suppose that this is the reason why when Maama was taken to the hospital on the 11th of November 2015, I knew I couldn’t win another bargain anymore. It wouldn’t be fair to God and it wouldn’t be fair to Maama.

Exactly 7 days and 4 hours ago, Maama passed on. A day before that, her heart function deteriorated and looking at her rhythm, I knew she was only barely here. I was given time, 30 days of Maama being in Intensive Care, to prepare my soul for what it was going to have to endure. I had 30 days before her demise, to grieve, to deny, to feel pain and guilt, to get angry and bargain, to feel broken and to slowly, painfully and gradually accept that she is gone.

Maama is gone.

For the majority of my life, I’ve not known Maama as an expressive person .. at least in terms of her affection towards anyone or anything. Maama was like royalty. Always graceful, slow, steady and required the house to be in order and things to her liking. She was never too emotional, expressive, haste or impulsive. She was larger than life. One could even say that she was easily entertained with the rest of us being completely the polar opposite of her; loud, hot-tempered, impulsive and a little in-your-face. She enjoyed it even.

I think the years of hardship she had endured, bearing 8 children and single-handedly and very literally putting a roof over the 4 children who survived had hardened her soul. When I was born, we were comfortable. Like yesterday, I remember that the love emanating out of her was limitless and unconditional towards me. Probably because the hardships she had to bear were well over.

Even with all things considered, the day we wheeled her off to the hospital was a day Maama was the most emotional towards Kaafa, that I could remember.

Picture this. Maama in her wheelchair, next to Kaafa sitting up on his bed and both of them holding hands, while she is being wheeled off out of her room. And she said this.

‘Mohammadhanikaa. Aharen dhen anburaa migeyakah naannaane. Aharen dhuniyeyga nethas dharinnaa zubaanu nukoh, emeehun bunaa kameh kohgen bas ahaigen reethikoh ulheythi’.

‘Mohammadhanik. I won’t be coming back home again. Even in a world without me, please don’t argue with your children. Do what they ask of you, listen to them and live peacefully’.

We took her away from him. For one last and lengthy battle.

And even in her last words to Kaafa, she was absolutely right.

She wasn’t coming back home.