The cocooned protection

Mahesh Grover

On a blistering summer afternoon, a child of tender years lay breathing laboriously in the lap of his mother, his feverish body in periodic spasms, alarming the mother who frantically kept applying a cold pack to him, distress writ large on her face.

Time was not to be wasted and gathering her child in her arms, she set out to see the doctor braving the heat outside.   

Upon reaching the clinic she trudged heavily, up the stairs to the doctor with extraordinary strength, child in her clasp, comforting him with soothing words, as experienced  hands set down to examine the child.  

On return, she propped the child on bed lovingly, feeding him spoonfuls of broth, so the sick body would regain its lost vigour; her gaze transfixed on his face, dark expressive eyes brimming with  love and compassion, her lips twisted slightly in a reassuring smile, though her brow still betrayed worrisome creases.

The child would occasionally throw up a tantrum to turn away the food but the firm hands assured completion of  the  feeding task. 

A feeble voice asking for water, jolted the boy, now a middle-aged man, back to the present, from the memory lane he had strayed into, while sitting beside his mother in a hospital.

He scrambled up quickly to give his mother water, as she lay motionless, confined to a bed, immobilised by the trappings of the post-surgical gadgetry, with ugly tubes protruding from parts of her body.  

“Would you like to have something to eat?” the son asked with concern.

She merely shook her head to say no.

“The doctor said you must have something to eat to regain your strength and saying so, the son lifted her head just a wee bit with one hand and started to feed his mother, spoonfuls of broth.

He gazed at her face, now wrinkled with age, the big dark eyes sunk into their sockets, the glimmer in them, now dimmed, the body weak, with the disease gnawing at her vitals.  

Her look, however, was intent on her son's face, as it was when she fed him; the affection visible in her distant but faded look as she drew solace from her son’s presence by her side. 

How quickly had the wheel turned a full circle. The protector now needing protection from the once protected.  

The son reminisced his days as a child, the succour in his mother’s lap, her soothing embrace; the embalming kiss, and an insular existence, away from harm, oblivious of the harsh realities of life and death — thoroughly cocooned.

Now watching his mother, lying defeated by age and disease, he desperately wanted to give her the cocooned protection, which once she afforded him, but knew regretfully well that all he could offer her was hollow solace and false hope of well-being and longevity while she, knowing all, uncomplainingly soaked in the falsehood.

There are some debts in life that remain unpaid, I guess.