She had hated her with an intensity she hadn't known she possessed. She hated her misplaced arrogance, her contempt for the ordinary man, her belief in her own superiority as if it were not God given but self acquired, her endless ambition, her greed for wealth, fame and power, her ever present need to be in control of people and situations and relationships, her sarcasm, her obsessive need to be declared the best in every field, her ceaseless attempts to be always the centre of attention. She tried hard to find common ground, but there was none ------ the significance each attached to family, home and career was in descending order for her and in ascending order for her bete noire. They even differed in their attitude towards men ------ was their weakness for pretty faces/sharp minds to be exploited or ignored ? For decades she had resisted the latter's attempts to control her life and her family's and had paid a heavy price in terms of heated arguments, bitter exchanges with her husband, endless tears, and the eternal question "why me".
Now, she stood at her bedside and wept as she had never wept before, a flood of tears that would not stop. He bent over the hospital bed, tears in his eyes, and in the tone of a five year old distressed beyond measure , repeatedly tried to elicit a response from her but her eyes remained blank, with not a flicker of recognition. The canula strapped hand moved briefly, but then dropped back.
To be so struck by sickness as to not recognise one's own child, to be rendered so helpless as to be unable to utter a word of affection or raise one's hand in blessing, to be oblivious to one's most beloved son ------ could there be a fate more terrible?
She wept at the sight, and she wept till the bitterness of decades was washed away, and there was only forgiveness in her heart, and a prayer : may this fate never be visited upon me and my sons.
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