I can't think of a name...

Last few months of living under the same roof as Mr.Ramaswamy, my paternal grandfather, has inspired this post. Mr.Ramaswamy had come to live with us since July, after his better half left him alone in his journey of life. Thailambal(my grandma) was a beautiful and a charming woman. They both were opposites in the true sense. She was an extrovert, can befriend anyone in the first meeting,a charmer,was always surrounded by a group of friends and gossip was her fav. pastime.We came to live in our present house about 10 yrs back with my grandparents and about half my colony knows my grandma. Excepting our next door neighbours no one knows my mom or dad. Well both my parents work, so they didn't get to socialise much here, still even after my grandparents had left chennai, people came to our house mostly to ask about my grandma.

About 10 years back she was diagnosed with a tumour which was cancerous, luckily for her it was only the beginning stage, still to undergo radium treatment at the age of 72 is no joke and the doc had given only 50% chance of survival. Considering the pain that u have to go through most people at tat age would give up.In fact my grandpa told my dad not to go ahead with her treatment, as he felt it wud be better to die than suffer from the pain. However, my grandma wasn't the one to give up so easily, she was a fighter. She told my dad "It is me who would decide if i must live or not, there is still more to see in life. So better pay for the treatment", not tat my dad wouldn't have gone ahead with the treatment otherwise, but it was the way she said those words with such a confident and determined look on her face tat left us all spellbound. It was her determination more than anything else which led to her recovery. She went on to live healthily without much trouble until she passed away last June.
My grandpa is cynical by nature, a total introvert,doesn't like to have company often and prefers to be left alone. They were both a near perfect match. If she had to put up with his cynicism, he had to put up with her need for change in life, my grandma easily gets bored with a city, and in the past 8 yrs my grandparents have shifted bases from chennai to ooty to coonor and to finally bangalore.

June 13th,2007 at 6.10 pm my grandma breathed her last.Her death was sudden and came as quite a shock to all of us, considering the fact that she had cooked lunch the previous day, had her usual chitchat with her neighbors and saw all her serials before going to bed. More than the loss of my grandma, it was very hard to see my thatha's grief, he was shivering and shedding tears like a lost kid. Life has never been the same for him since then, no doubt the death of your life partner will turn your life upside down, but for an old man in his early 90s, to become a widower, after 65 years of marriage to a woman like my grandma is something very hard to live with. He would often say "The most important person in my life has passed away." What he misses the most is her companionship. Each day seems too difficult to pass. At 90, with a weak memory and poor eyesight there's very little one can do to pass time. Apart from engaging in short conversations with either of us, the rest of the day he would spend only in bed. At this stage, when the desire to live is lost, the real challenge is to survive through each day, cos death being inevitable never comes at your own convenience.