If you want to kill me, just do it unmercifully!!
If you want to kill me, just do it unmercifully!!
“A weathered skeleton
in the windy fields of memory
piercing like a knife”
- Haiku poem by Matsuo Basho
They say I don’t
have any life to live, but look! I am living a dead life for the last 28 years.
They say I don’t breathe on my own, but look! I can inhale and exhale...They
say I am like a vegetable, but look! I am still a piece of meat, human flesh, precisely.
One day, they pass a verdict to grant me a merciful death but I beg, do it
unmercifully. Let me die with the burden of being killed by the angels of death
who were waiting to gobble me up rather than upholders of justice killing me
for my unworthiness.
How can someone
call a heinous act to kill someone as merciful? Whatever the reasons may be,
how can the worth of a life be measured or how can mortal human beings decide
that my life is not worthy enough to be lived. Why should I be murdered under
the pretence of mercy killing? Why did God let this happen to me? Why only me?
Have you ever
imagined how it is to sleep for long 28 years? Peaceful, you guess. But my life
is contrary to the word “peaceful”. Each passing day of my life or near to
death existence has become an unending battle to hold onto life or whatever of
it that remains.
Some say dying
is much easier than this half-life. Is dying that easy? Lying in the same
paralyzed position for the past 28 years has given me ample time to ponder on
it. Death... Will I be able to see the sun rise after I die? Will I be able to
feel the wind’s joyous hide and seek after I die? Will I be able to feel the
hope in the eyes of my caretakers who still believe that I’ll wake up? Will I
be able to remember what it is to be loved without terms and conditions?
Why didn’t I die
a long time ago? Why didn’t I die when he molested me and crippled me to nothingness?
I guess I am still alive to be an awful spectator to the wonderful workings of
human nature. Some of them want me dead .Some still hope that I’ll wake up. Some
who make a living by writing stories of people like us. The other day I heard
the nurse murmuring something to herself. I could only catch a single word-
euthanasia. I didn’t know what it meant to be. I put that word into my long
list of words to look in the dictionary after I wake up. Suddenly, the nurse
did something unthinkable. She began to cry. She never cried in front of me.
She didn’t cry when I had to fight for my life. She hadn’t cried when my fiancé
left me but now she was crying for something not understandable to me. She held
my hand and said,” Aruna, you know me very well. You know that I don’t cry in
front of you but today it is different. Some monsters of law said that you need
to die. They say that you’d be freed from this half life. How can I accept it,
Aruna? I have taken care of you for the last 28 years and I will continue to do
so till you wake up.” Fat drops of water fell from her eyes.
Death has never
made me cry. I will accept death when it comes to me but I won’t accept it as
one of the free services that is being offered on the streets. I looked at the
nurse sympathetically. This lady comes everyday and checks if I need something.
She always has that unshakable and ever flaming hope in her eyes that I’ll wake
up. How can I die even if everything won’t be the same after I get up? I won’t
let anyone take my life. Death eludes me but a new life equally frightens me.
The world has moved on and I lay here with a flickering hope that someday I
will cross the tightrope between life and death. I will live to wake up one day.
Some day...
Wow!!That was something different Irin.....stay blessed.
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