The shades of life..

Once upon a time, life used to be simpler, and going about at a cordial pace. Incidents, planned or impromptu, were always accountable to certain legit circumstances.  Everything seemed to have a reason; for good or for bad, it used to be acceptable. For all those things that were acceptable in the past, there used to be someone mature enough, who was accountable to. There were people you looked up to for answers to such questions which life posed ominously. And naively, with all the innocence that could exist, you used to accept those answers with assuring belief. Those people were your philosophers. Their viewpoints shaped your ideology. And they could never disappoint you in their ways. For me, it was my parents; and they still are, but certain things have changed now.

In the years that fly by (seems like a fortnight to me!), and with life seemingly getting out of your hands, with nobody accountable to the series of events happening in your life, when your begetters are themselves riveted by the circumstances, we are expected to switch roles with them. They need the light that they had been guiding us with all these years. We now become their pillars that they had raised us to be. But what I doubt is, do we really become that capable when the time comes?

To see your own support system crashing, the kind of helplessness one faces cannot be expressed (atleast I cannot!). Someone whom you had always relied upon, suddenly not being there in that place, is the hardest blow to one’s existence. You can never be prepared for it, unless it becomes this slow gradual process where you are bound to go through all the stages of grief: i.e. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. By the time you reach the final two stages, you are most likely to be prepared to switch roles. To smile when a situation demands so, to be tough and make decisions without always choosing the happy one, to stop questioning the occurrence of events, and perhaps to be someone else’s support system.

I feel the need to clarify this here that I have been writing this post because I see so many cancer patients everyday, and talking to them I see those patients and their families bring out all of their anguishes and apprehensions towards life. I can never know what it feels like to be in their individual situation, but I certainly can empathize with them, since I have my own share of personal setbacks. I just had an elderly patient today with stage IV pancreatic cancer, diagnosed after an entirely healthy life of no addictions, still in the phase of anger, and questioning me as to why did such a horrendous disease take over him despite of him being such a decent man all his life. I obviously stood there speechless listening to him, realizing it all perfectly that there is no answer to any of his queries. And finally he told me to fear that one supreme power that lies above us all, because nobody perhaps can understand his ways.  And then there are so many other patients who have been in remission for quite a while, distraught with a relapse of their disease. All in this perpetual cycle of hospitals and therapies, being hopeful on the outside, and daunted on the inside. The children taking care of their elderly parents, and the young parents bringing in their sick toddlers. Each of them being a support system for the other. And we merely as pawns, finding out that it is all a part of the inevitable circle of life. It might be every individual’s separate story, but it is certainly every house’s. For some it happens too early, and for some quite late, but the times change, and the roles do too. And there is nothing you can do about it, except for reaching the 5^th stage, which is of Acceptance. And there is no way to fast forward to it. It is going to take, what would seem like, all the time in the world.

But it shall pass too; the scars may remain, but I am hoping for times to change again..