Last Kiss

She was dying. 

The house was as silent as a graveyard. Everyone was exhausted, everyone was numb. There had been a lot of tears, frantic calls and busy activity the past few months. Now they were just a bunch blank, bewildered, pale faces. It was one of those tragic diseases which struck human life like a lightning bolt. It was incurable, it was fatal. A minor ailment had lead to a series of tests being performed and only then had the disease been detected. It had been hiding like a snake in her warm, mortal body for far too long. The very first specialist had pronounced the death sentence. It was only a matter of three or four months.

Within the tomb-like house there was undisturbed sleep only in her eyes. She lay, like a creamy white flower-of-the-valley, on her bed, ensconced in a downy quilt, carefully tucked on all sides by loving maternal hands. In sleep she looked almost like a child, although she would have been twenty-five coming summer. But for the tremendous loss of weight and the necessary cropping of her hair, an outsider would never have been able to guess that she was dying. She slept soundly. Her little chest rising up and down in a steady rhythm. Only, this sleep was induced with the help of a variety of drugs and sedatives. When the doctors had given up all hope, after all sorts of therapies, medications and operations had been tried, she had expressed one final wish. She wanted to return home. 

In the other rooms of the house it was an entirely different story. In one of the rooms her father sat stoically, along with relatives and friends, their eyes were red-rimmed, their faces were hard and expressions defiant yet painfully contorted. They tried to make normal conversation, read the papers, discuss politics but no one was really listening to what the other was saying. In the master bedroom her mother lay on the bed. Her head nestled on an elderly female relatives lap, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. The other women sat around her, some cross-legged on the bed, others on chairs or on the carpeted floor. Alternately heaving deep sighs or quietly wiping away a tear from the corner of their eyes with the edge of the anchal of their sarees. 

Around noon she stirred, painfully opened her eyes, blinked for some time and moistened her parched lips. She was very thirsty and desperate for a sip of water. But she did not have the strength to perform the laughably easy task of raising her hand a few inches and reaching for the glass of water set on her bedside table. So she pressed a switch attached to an extended cord, conveniently placed just beside her fingers. A sharp, jarring buzz rang in three different rooms of the house. It was the tone of the electric buzzer which had been installed a few weeks back, so that her every need would be fulfilled at the earliest, and also in case of some emer…

Her mother and father, almost simultaneously, rushed into her room. Both with helpless terror in their eyes which quickly softened with relief on seeing that her eyes were open and moving.

“What is it darling? Is there something you need?” her mother asked, lovingly brushing away the stray strands of short wispy hair from her forehead. “Some water, Ma” she replied, in a barely audible whisper. Even this was clearly heard by both her parents, whose ears had become trained to catch every murmur that came out of their daughter’s lips. Her father took the glass from the bedside table and carefully helped her take a few sips from it. “Thanks Dad” she said, giving a tiny, sweet smile, which almost broke his heart. She had always been like that- polite, kind, considerate, always sensitive to others’ feelings and never wasting more than a minute on self-pity. 

Perhaps it was because of this sweet nature of hers that no one was surprised when she had chosen to become a teacher after completing her post-graduate in English literature. While all her friends had gone on to take up more special courses to land themselves lucrative jobs in corporate houses or publishing firms and so on, she had taken up higher studies in Education. Soon after she was appointed as a teacher in a prestigious city school, she had already begun, slowly but steadily, working her way up as a senior teacher. She had lived an uneventful life, according to her own standards. She had never strayed from her path and her clear set goals. She had always been a dutiful daughter, a dutiful student and even as an adult she had been responsible and serious. As she had been growing up, her friends had often tried to convince her to be a bit more “wild”, as they termed it. “You’ll be young only once”, they said, “let your hair down once in a while, have some fun, and loosen up”. But she had always declined those not-so-subtle invitations and avoided these common temptations of youth. “Let me just keep to the straight path now”, she would explain, “once I am on my own two feet and have saves enough money, I will then live life on my own terms. I will travel, have adventures and then finally, hopefully, I will fall in love one day, and settle down with my man.” She had very simple dreams. “I am not ambitious like you guys”, she would tell her friends. “I don’t have huge aspirations and exotic dreams. All I want is a simple and comfortable life, where I can take things slowly, so I get time to appreciate the little pleasantries of life. I want to enjoy this charming gift of life given to me by God, its subtle beauty, and the amazing passions and feelings of mankind and all living beings”. And this was exactly how she did lead her life. She was always on the lookout for the purity and innocence in life, always seeking the goodness in man and his relationships, and the splendor of nature and God.

Now all those dreams were shattered. She had wanted to live life slowly and steadily, not at a giddying fast pace, thinking that she had her entire life ahead of her. But God had another plan for her. The pages from the second half of the book of her life had been ripped off. Sometimes, in moments of despair, when she lay awake in her room, she knew not when, she reflected on the years which had gone by. “What was the use of all those years?” she would think. “Why didn’t I enjoy myself more? Why didn’t I go clubbing with friends? Or on long drives at night, or drinking, dancing, flirting with boys? What was the purpose of that abstinence and prudence? Why did I work so hard and limit pleasure-seeking activities? My life will end soon and all I gleaned from this existence was a handful of bookish learning and some stray moments of laughter and tears with family and close friends. I haven’t yet made foolish, juvenile mistakes, I haven’t known the excitement of keeping secrets, I haven’t experienced the dark yet exciting depths of life and I haven’t even fallen in love “.A few tears would escape from under her closed eyelids and she would brush them away quickly and guiltily. “I shouldn’t be remorseful and complaining only because I lead such a life. I should be grateful that I have such loving and supportive family and friends especially my parents who are doing more than what is within their means to make me comfortable and to lessen the pain”. 

After she had learnt of her terminal illness, she had been racked with fear and confusion for the first few months. But with time, she had managed to pull herself together. She had talked with her parents and family for hours, sometimes crying, sometimes soothing, and sometimes even cracking jokes to lift their spirits, and her own as well. It had been tough, but she had finally come to terms with the inevitable truth. Her greatest comfort had been praying. She had always had unflinching faith in God and she knew that if she deserved it, her maker would always protect her. 

But…this numbing sense of tranquility wasn’t completely soothing. Even in her moments of total sense of peace within herself there was some pin-prick of regret, a certain sinking feeling in her stomach, a trapped sigh of despair in her body.  And it didn’t take her long to realize the source of this regret, the sinking feeling, the dejected sigh, was something with which she had been familiar for all of her adult life. She had experienced it on and off quite a few times. It was the longing for love. This was the feeling that hurt her most when faced with the fact that her days were numbered, also this was the cause of her greatest guilt. She was guilty because she didn’t want to seem ungrateful. She had a loving family, an intimate circle of loving friends, in fact most of the people who knew, loved her. But the love that was the missing jig-saw piece of her soul was of a different kind altogether.

That day was like any other. The weather was not exceptionally warm or cold, there were no clouds shaped like magical creatures, it wasn’t a holiday, it wasn’t a day which entered into the pages of history. Her father had just returned from work, he left work early these days, unwilling to spend any time away from his dying child. Her mother was listlessly going about her household chores. It was just before sunset. She had been sleeping almost the entire day but suddenly she was wide awake. Disoriented she looked around her feebly trying to remember where she was. Like a mist clearing in the deep recesses of her mind her bearings were restored. She sensed the now familiar numbness of sedatives all over her body, the excruciating pain in her abdomen and the limpness of her exhausted limbs. She shut her eyes again and trying to block her bodily sensations she focused on the dream from which she had so suddenly woken up. It had been a very comforting dream. She remembered that she had been very happy, light-hearted and free while she was doing whatever it was that she experienced in her dream. The events of her dream had faded from her memory but the sweet and colorful feelings that she had experienced a few moments ago still lingered. She heard her front door bell ring. Guessing that it was probably another relative or friend who had come to “see” her and comfort her parents, she kept her eyes shut. She thought she heard murmurs in the living room. She was a little irritated by these streams of callers. She was grateful for their concern and their kind words but she was empathetic towards her parents. It was hard on them to battle with their own personal loss everyday along with the responsibility of attending to guests. 

She heard the slow swishing sound of the door to her room, as it was opened gently. Reluctantly she raised her eyelids, mentally preparing herself to be stoically cheerful. She saw a tall figure, a boy, about her own age, with a friendly, smiling face and an ethereal angelic aura surrounding him. None of her parents were with him, surprisingly. Usually either her mother or her father accompanied all visitors into her room. As far as her practical knowledge was concerned, she was absolutely sure she had never seen this stranger in her life. However, in some inexplicable way, he wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. She felt a strange feeling of relief and joy wash over her like a cool breath of fresh air. The smiling face was like the face of a long-lost childhood friend. She felt as though she had finally reached the end of a journey, yet throughout that journey she had always had him by her side. 

Quietly he sat down beside her, on her bed and stooped towards her face. Then, softly, like the white flowers which detach from their tree and float downwards to rest on the earth, he planted a kiss on her blanched, papery lips.

Mr. Bose folded the newspaper which he had been holding for the past three quarters of an hour, and put it on the pile of newspapers on the coffee table. The papers were well thumbed but hardly read. He went towards his daughter’s room and almost simultaneously his wife joined him. They opened the door and stepped into her room switching on the mellow golden colored night light. Darkness had descended; the sun had set some time back. 

They found their daughter in deep sleep. They also noticed something different about her, her cheek had more color, her expression was more relaxed and there was the ghost of a smile on her lips. Mr. Bose’s eyes welled up and glancing at his wife he noticed that she too was quietly wiping her glistening cheeks with the hem of her saree. With great reluctance Mrs. Bose moved towards her daughter’s bed. It was time for her medicines and her child would have to be awoken from her infantile sleep. Fondly Mrs. Bose caressed her daughters forehead and whispered, “Wake up darling; it’s time to take your medicine”. Her child stirred, and smiling a bit wider she opened her eyes and looked up at her mother’s face, infused with the expression of sorrowful love. With the deliberate and unhurried motion of people suffering from great pain, she lifted her palm and placed it on her mother’s outstretched hand. Then she raised her other hand towards her father and he took it in both his hands and kissed it. Now their tears were flowing fast and steady. With the unspoken communication which can only be comprehended among people whom we love, all three were hit with the truth.

“I don’t need my medicines anymore mother, I am cured”. 

She had been kissed at last. The Kiss of death.