Did she have to die all alone?
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
The world is weary of its old, though we
dare not acknowledge it. Now it seems as if Sri Lanka is also ashamed of
its mentally ill. Add the old to the mentally ill, and that's something
we don't want to talk about. Just hide them somewhere or put them into
an institution, like Unit 2 of the Mulleriyawa Mental Hospital and forget
about them. Let them fade away from memory.
That is just what happened to someone who was my "temporary friend"
at Unit 2. I think that is what happens to most people at Unit 2. I went
to see her in May. She was quite old. Yes, she mumbled a little bit, may
be because she had just one tooth, I later realised, when she flashed me
a charming smile. Yes, she couldn't remember certain things and repeated
her questions. I too can't remember certain things. Does that mean that
I am mentally ill? Repetition of questions comes with gradual loss of memory
brought on by senile decay.
Anyway, she had been at Unit 2 for a long time. She was a "veteran".
She knew who was there and what was going on. She also loved sweets. And
she had a long chat with me the day I visited her. She wanted me to take
my children to see her. But now she's no more. Was anyone informed of her
illness and death?
According to the staff she got a high fever around the end of August,
and was taken to the Colombo National Hospital. Even the date of her death
is uncertain. Then what? The National Hospital is "supposed"
to inform her relatives. I don't know whether they did. They kept her body
in the mortuary for 11 days and sent it for burial to Kanatte.
What shocks me is the indifference and matter-of-fact way these things
take place. No one cares, not a whit. She was just a "number"
at Unit 2. Wasn't she like us - a loved daughter of someone, a sister of
someone or another human being.
I can remember, as a little girl, how I used to weep when a pet dog
or cat died. They were the tears of a child. My parents understood, and
I think, shared in my grief, for the ritual was that we would tenderly
wrap the animal in a cloth, bury it in our garden and plant a tree to mark
the grave. That was for an animal.
But, here a person is dead. Couldn't anyone at Unit 2 inform people
who visited her and whose addresses they had, that she was ill- that she
was dead?.
Just think - a frail, old person is lying on her deathbed, in a cold,
may be clean ward, reeking with disinfectant, of the National Hospital.
No one by her bedside. No one to hold her hand for moral support as she
struggles to begin her journey to the great beyond. Alone, all alone. It
needn't have been that way, because there were people who cared for her,
there were people who visited her.
How do they bury such people? She was an ardent Christian, and carried
a rosary all the time. Was she given a Christian burial? I can see in my
mind's eye, the bureaucracy smirking and thinking that I am mad. They would
argue that they don't have the resources to do so. But isn't the government
or at least the institution in which she spent a major part of her life
responsible?
The callousness bothers me. May be to the National Hospital staff she
was a new patient. Here today, gone tomorrow. A waif of a woman. But surely,
couldn't the Unit 2 staff, where she was a "long-term" resident,
do something? Are we sub-humans?
The "little old lady" of Unit 2 is no more. I don't think
we need to shed a single tear for her, because I believe she has reached
that "beautiful shore" where there is no sorrow, where indifference
and callousness can't touch her.
We should weep for ourselves, for having to live in a society where
people don't care. Where staff of institutions such as Unit 2, which should
give extra attention to those forgotten by the world, are doing just another
job, may be because most of them are on "punishment transfer".
We should also weep for our bureaucrats, who consider such institutions
a burden and try to keep what happens inside a "state secret".
Yes, we should shed bitter tears for ourselves too as a society for tolerating
such blatant callousness
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