Of Memories With My Morrie. #3

I sit and stare at him all day. That's pretty much all that anyone can do at this time.
He moves. He tries to make sounds that finally die away in painful moans. His lips are dry, he cannot speak properly. All the time he's awake, it seems that he is thinking. Seems he wants to say something but somehow words evade him. These days words shy away from everyone else around him. Seems like what needs to be said doesn't need the help of words.
A silent encouraging smile, a gentle caress, a warm slight pat on the shoulder, a sad look, a tearful eye sums up most conversations I have with my Morrie. Sometimes all he does is try and recognize people that come to visit. He looks hard at them, I think he tries to focus his vision and then says the name of the person looking down on him with sorrowful and sometimes pitiful eyes. (I personally hate all those with the pitiful looks!) I wonder how important recognition is in terms of defining his cognition of other matters?
There are times when he says absurd things. Today he wanted to tell me F2's name (?!), said he wanted to meet Dinkar Gangal (none of us have ever heard of this person), wanted to exchange gas cylinders with Reliance Power (now there's a thought!). You know, how does one define cognition, coherence of thought with recognition of people?! I think people like to please themselves by the knowledge that he still remembers them.

Seeing him today, the number of bed-sores and bruises on his body, the morphine patch, the butterfly with needles stuck in him, the saline bottle (the only thing that's keeping him alive) made me want him to pass away now. I might sound like the most wicked person that ever walked this planet, but it's far better than seeing him go through all the hurt and pain. I was holding his hand and caressing it today when I saw how different they looked; his looked deathly pale yellow and mine pink. I thought it was like comparing the hands of death with life. When I realized this I felt his hands warm in my hands and that warmth comforted me. The thought that he is still breathing makes me feel better. I know I am being selfish feeling that, but I don't want it any other way.

I don't cry anymore. I don't see the point. It's fate. I agree with him now, what is meant to happen will happen. He said another thing some days back, when he could still speak a little, he said, "I still want to do so many things, but now I've realized that life doesn't work that way; we don't live to do things. We live, therefore we do things." For me, that was a profound lesson and after that day, I had taken it to be his last lesson.
I was wrong. I was terribly, horribly wrong. His final lesson is a prolonged session of understanding death, of accepting it gracefully, of facing it as if it were life and most importantly, it is a lesson in letting go. "Letting go of the carnal pleasures", he had said, "is the most difficult thing. You cannot leave your flesh and body that have defined *you* since the day you came into existence."
What I've taken from this is that memory stays and I am bent on making every last minute with him as memorable as the all the other happy times we've had!

My Morrie wanted to do a champagne party on his and my parents' 25th wedding anniversary. They had planned on doing the Europe tour, leave a day before his anniversary and come back a day after my parents'. Go to the Jules Verne on the Tour Eiffel and open a bottle of Champagne overlooking the most romantic city in the world. His wedding anniversary is on this 15th and I'm praying to God that he stays until after 15th or he goes before that (my concerns are now mainly for his wife).