When the sheltering tree fell
By Shevlin Sebastian
At 10 p.m. on February 18, 2021, I went downstairs to see my bed-ridden father, Joseph (‘Appachen’) Sebastian, at our home in Kochi. This was a daily routine. On this night, my dad looked fresh as ever. At 94+ years, he had an unlined face, a smooth forehead, black hair among the grey (what an exceptional genetic gift) and was clean-shaven. At 6 p.m., the caregiver Shafi (name changed) had given him a bath, put powder on his face and body and jasmine oil on his hair. My dad was clad in a blue shirt and a white dhoti.
He was breathing through his mouth. His eyes remained closed. He may have been sleeping. I sat next to his bed and stared at him. Shafi sat on the other side. He told me things didn’t look too good. My dad was sleeping most of the time. His appetite had gone down. His kidneys had started to malfunction. We opted for palliative care at this late stage, rather than rush him to an ICU and ply him with medicines.
Shafi said, “Why don’t you give Appachan some water? Since Appachan is breathing through his mouth, he must be thirsty.”
So, I took a small plastic bottle, removed the cap, but found that my hands trembled. I couldn’t pour without some of it falling outside.
Shafi said, “Use the cap.”
So, I did so.
Dad drank the water.
I did so three times.
Then I placed the bottle on the table and caressed my father’s forehead a few times. Then I stroked his chest.
“Daddy,” I said. “It’s me, Shevlin.”
He heard me, and his eyelids quivered. But he could not open his eyes.
A few minutes later, I told Shafi, “I am going up.”
He nodded.
I walked up the stairs with a heavy heart and opened the door.
My mobile rang.
It was Shafi.
He said, “Appachan has passed away.”
My wife, children, and I ran down the stairs. As soon as we reached the bed, I noticed he was not breathing.
“How can you be sure?” my wife asked Shafi.
We called our neighbour, Dr Hari, who arrived with his stethoscope. He checked all the vital signs, looked up, and said, “He has passed away.”
Shafi later told me, “Dad took one deep breath, and he was gone.”
Immediately, we informed all our relatives. Many people, including my uncle Babu, aunts Rani and Sessy, cousins Reena and Anitha, arrived at the house.
Anitha’s husband, Vinoo Devasia, a successful entrepreneur, took control of matters. There was a need for a COVID negative certificate. We took the body in an ambulance to the Lisie Hospital, where the nurse performed the test. Since he was brought dead, the police had to be informed. We had to go to the police station. Negotiations took place. They came to the hospital to certify it was a normal death.
It was a ceaseless round of activity. But thanks to the efficiency of Vinoo, the hospital released the body the next day, at 7 a.m., with all the permissions.
The burial took place in the afternoon, at 4 p.m., at Changanacherry, my dad’s hometown, 100 kms away. Earlier, the body had been placed in the ancestral home, where people came and paid their respects. Nuns sang hymns, and the Archbishop came and said prayers. Relatives and friends offered their condolences.
It was at the graveside that something strange happened to me. My defences collapsed, and I began crying. Soon, my body was wracked with sobs. Wave after wave of sorrow passed through me. I could not believe this was happening. I had never cried in public before. My eyes were closed. My wife held me by the shoulders and whispered in my ears, “It’s alright. Let it out.”
And as I watched the coffin go down, another bout of convulsions hit me. It seemed to be that the sorrow was unending. Perhaps it was the stress of the past several months, or I had loved my father without realising it. Later, in the car, I continued to cry. My son put a conciliatory arm across my shoulders. The journey back to Kochi passed in a blur of tears.
It has been a slow recovery ever since. Now and then, I think of him and I can feel the tears rise behind my eyelids. In the beginning, the tears rolled down my cheeks. Once, when my uncle called me from Chicago, I spoke calmly for a while, then I burst out crying. It was hard to accept that he would no longer be physically present any more.
A few weeks later, my wife and I donated all his clothes and other accessories to an old age home for poor men. I am sure my father would have been happy we had given his clothes to help others.
I called my childhood friend. My father had been a mentor to him. He began weeping.
When I thanked a cousin, he said, “You don’t understand. Your father was like a father to me. He helped me so much.” Another relative, in his mid-seventies, said, “You don’t know it, but your dad was a great man.”
He helped start many careers by getting them jobs. Many thrived; they went up the ladder. They bought cars and houses, married well, and provided an excellent education for their children. Through careful savings, they built a tidy nest egg for retirement.
A few were grateful to my father.
Down the road, where we lived, was a person called Elias (name changed) who lived in Kolkata. Occasionally, my parents would have conversations with Elias. His wife had died of cancer and now he lived all alone, as his two sons lived abroad.
One day, he told me he would be forever grateful to my father. When he went to Kolkata for the first time, it was my father who helped him to settle down and got him his first job. When I told my father this, he could not recall this.
A day after my father passed away, I got a WhatsApp message. A school classmate’s sister passed a message from her mother. ‘Very sorry to hear that Appachan had passed away. He was like an elder brother to us. Always ready to help.’
I am so proud of his legacy and his impact.
The backstory
In August, last year, my father had a series of minor strokes. It did not paralyse him, but his brain got damaged. His memory became spotty. Sometimes, the words that he spoke couldn’t be understood. Sometimes, he would struggle to say a word. But the word no longer existed in his brain. He shook his head and felt puzzled.
I would watch him with a feeling of alarm within me.
Since my father suffered from an early stage of dementia, he could see people in spirit form. The doctor said it was hallucinations, but I believe science does not have all the answers. Many spirits came to visit him. He stared at the ceiling, sometimes at the corners of the walls, and he could see these people. Once, he told Shafi, his parents met him. His brother-in-law, who died in a bike accident when he was 24, came once. Then it was his business partner, TB Viswanathan. Sometimes, he expressed his inability to recognise who they were. He conveyed all this during his rare moments of clarity. Shafi said this was a common occurrence.
Once, when I was sitting on a chair near his head, I saw his eyes bulge as he stared at the ceiling. Then he whispered, “Wonderful.” I wondered what he saw. But it was something that gave him pleasure.
But steadily, my father’s body was breaking down. How this happens has been described brilliantly in the book, ‘How We Die’ by Sherwin Newland, an American surgeon who passed away in 2014. It was an international bestseller. I read this book several years ago. I told my sister about this book. So I bought it online and gave it to her.
Now and then we put up photos of him in family WhatsApp groups so that they could know what was happening. Many live in America and couldn’t visit because of the pandemic. In reply, we got emojis with hands joined in prayer, a flower bouquet, hearts or thumbs up. Those who live nearby came, smiled, touched him and said sweet things. My dad smiled when he was awake.
Otherwise, if he was sleeping, they stared at him, talking in a low voice to us.
My dad’s caregiver, Shafi, came to us by accident. A Hindu client had called the agency where he worked. But when they discovered he was a Muslim, they rejected him. (Oh God, will this bigotry ever end?)
And so he came to us.
Shafi looked after my father well. He bathed him twice a day (this was my dad’s practice for decades), shaved him, brushed his teeth and put oil on his head. Sometimes, he massaged my dad’s head. And dad almost went off to sleep.
Shafi, even though he is only 34, has looked after over 20 end-of-life patients. He told me the end can be terrifying for onlookers and loved ones. He had seen patients whose heads had enlarged. Some patients shouted and screamed throughout the day and night. Others no longer had control over their bowel movements. The transition to the other world can be painful and horrifying. In the end, he said, wives and children have no option but to pray that the man of the house passes away. Love gets burned up in the agony of seeing their father/husband suffer.
But not all are physically present. There are many cases where the children are abroad. The father is alone with a caregiver. The mother has passed away. There are cameras in the rooms and the children are trying to monitor the activities from 8000 kms away. But there is nobody to say soothing words to the old man, caress his face, and talk to him lovingly. There is silence, the bored instructions of the caregiver, and emptiness.
Dynamic Dad
I had never seen my father lying on a bed. During his several decades in Kolkata, where we grew up, he got up early and moved about like a dynamo throughout the day. In 94 years, he would not have spent more than a month in a hospital. God blessed him with great health: no sugar, no diabetes, no blood pressure, and no cardiac problems.
What helped was a loving attitude towards people. He was always ready to help. He was a progressive long before the word came into fashion. At home, my father assisted my mother in the kitchen. He loved to iron clothes. Dad took out all the bed sheets and pillowcases and replaced them with freshly ironed ones. He made the morning cup of tea, and our breakfast, since my mother, a teacher, left by 8 a.m. I had my shoes polished by him. He edited a magazine and did an enormous amount of social work in the slums of Kolkata. Many visitors from Kerala stayed with us whenever they came to Calcutta.
My father had a business that did well. But he worked in an unusual manner. While he devoted the first half of the day to business, the second half was for social work.
My father was a liberal. He loved and respected people of all religions and castes. As a liberal parent, he never interfered with my life. He allowed me to listen to my inner voice. And I could discover my calling as a writer. Because of this, I have enjoyed every moment of my life. Rarely do I feel depressed about anything. Yes, owing to the pricks and pains of life, I felt negative now and then, against people and destiny, but the mood does not last for long. Overall, it has been a happy life. All because my father gave me the freedom to be myself.
Now what?
I do not know.
Friends, whose parents have passed away, told me this is a lifelong wound. The pain will lessen, but it will always be there. My uncle told me, “You will meet your father, but only in your dreams.” Another friend said that when he goes through hard times, he prays to his parents for help. “Things get solved,” he said. “They are there to guide you.”
I stare at the room where he had spent so many months. The hospital bed has been dismantled and taken away. There is an emptiness. I remember when my father was lucid, he would always say, with a smile, when I stood next to the bed, “Please sit down.”
I look at his photo, his watch, his razor, his spectacles, and the medicine box, which has slots for tablets for morning, noon and night. On Sunday evenings, I would fill the box with the different tablets for the coming week.
The memories come.
And tears rise in my eyes.
But here is a happy memory. When my father was about to be taken in for an MRI scan in the hospital, a day after his stroke, he was lying on a gurney. My sister stood next to him. I came in a few minutes later.
My sister said, “Daddy, Shevlin has come.”
My father opened his eyes, gave such a beautiful smile, my sister couldn’t help but exclaim, “Oh, Daddy is so happy to see you.”
Sorry that i was unaware of your fathers demise last year. very nice writeup and an ideal tribute to him. RIP
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