Nunc dimittis

We are wrapped in mist.

All day long.  Cold, white clouds outside.  Yellow light inside Shanti Kunj.

The silhouettes of our beloved banj oak trees fading and emerging in the whiteness of the world and the absolute stillness of monsoonal Landour.

It's been a hard day here with Mum and Dad.  At its end, as we inch towards the midnight hour - I am typing out these words and Dad is sitting in his chair reading Kipling short stories.

It's hard to see those you love in pain.  And pain is what Dad has been experiencing these last ten days.   We were so glad that Stefan was able to come and spend a precious set of days with Dad.  Stefan painted a number of portraits of Dad over the course of long leisurely conversations.

Here is one of them, which is already hanging up in Mum and Dad's room:

When Stefan left to go back to his family in the US and the second half of his two year Masters of Fine Arts in painting, he posted this picture on FB and said: 'Our last walk. For now.'

It made me want to cry - for the beauty of the image - the two dear ones walking into the mist.  Will there be another walk together, or will that have to wait for the unveiling of the New Kingdom and the life eternal?

The day after Stefan left, Dad had a fever and was admitted at Landour Community Hospital for four days.  The fever was taken care of the next day and after 3 days of good care, Dad was discharged home.

And then the pain started to kick in for Dad.  Big time.  I was attending the EHA annual meetings at Ramnagar. Sheba was with Enoch at Lalitpur and I got a call from Mum and Dad on Monday night saying that he just was not doing well.  I had earlier planned to be up in Mussoorie for 2 days after the meetings.  This became imperative.

So yesterday morning I got to Mussoorie blurry eyed in the mist.  It took some time to get to understand how Dad really was.   One thing was clear, his pain meds were way below the amount needed.  Dad now has significant back pain and continues to have different levels of pain in the abdomen throughout the day.  And he has trouble breathing too.  He finds it easiest to sit in his chair.

We tried to address the pain today.  We are back to taking the meds every four hours - but at double the dose that we started out with.   Dad keeps a meticulous record of every medication he takes.  Today's levels were serious stuff.  Every time I asked him about pain and he admitted having it - we took another dose.  By the end of the day he had taken 90 mg of morphine.

We were also able to give him a shave and a bath, but at present Dad is very weak and can hardly move between his bed and chair.   The walks that he had with Stefan seem a distant memory now - and yet it was only ten days ago.

Mum has been a rock of strength for Dad.  She has poured herself into caring for him.  A beautiful sight - their 49th year of marriage being lived out in its fullest.  To have and to hold, in sickness or in health...  It is hard for all of us to have Dad so unwell.  We are praying and trusting and living each day as it comes.  Mum sits with Dad and reads the Bible with him.  Prays.  Makes small tasty meals for Dad.  Gives him back and foot massages.  Prays.  Talks with him.  Looks out at the mist-shrouded trees outside.  Checks her emails.  Gets the odd phone call (when the phones spark back to life).  Checks in on Dad.  Prays. Plays the piano a bit.  She is a living embodiment of love.

Dad took a cold hard look at the number of pain killers he had to take today.  We had a long conversation after that.  Long because at this point Dad finds it hard to breath and speak.  His words sometimes are in a whisper.  He expresses a thought s l o w l y.   And will wait to share his next thought.  It is clear to Dad that things are pretty serious.  The cancer in him is not diminishing.  There is always the room for the miraculous - and we do continue to pray for healing - but all the signs are that our loving God is allowing the cancer to continue to work its way through Dad.  The end looks increasingly nearer.

And so tonight we talked about how Dad has come around to trying to 'grit it out' with his pain - to being ready to ramp up the meds without fear of addiction.   About how at this point he feels weak and helpless and in need of intensive care - even though he does not really like going that route. Though he wants to be independent, he is very dependent now.   Dad asked me to call Mum and we reviewed what our conversation had been and started exploring whether Dad and Mum should come down with me to Lalitpur for the next season of care.  We prayed about this and are asking God to show us the next steps forward.

Dad has been ready for death for many years now.  He loves Jesus and knows that whatever God chooses to do is good.  But the whole process is just not easy.  We are walking down a path that none of us has trodden so far.

And so we have slipped into  a new day.  The lights in both of our rooms are still on.  Mum is asleep, but Dad is still reading.  I thought he just whispered my name so went across - but he did not, and seems to be in a cheery mood again, ready to brush his teeth and then sleep.

Here is a shot of Mum and Dad which I think sums up their life together.  She had just persuaded him to have some food - and then managed to get him to eat some dahi with plum jam.  What a life-time of love our dear parents have modeled for us.  And continue to do so in the twilight of their lives.

So how long more will we have Dad with us?  Only our loving Lord Jesus knows for sure.  Is it two days, two weeks, two months or two years?   We know one thing for sure - that whenever the Lord chooses to call Dad to the next level of living, Dad will be ready.

Dad's whole life is a fleshing out of Simeon's prophetic statement when that man-who-had-waited-a-lifetime held the infant Jesus in his arms:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.” 

- Luke 2.29-32

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Demographic Studies redux

My old mate from way back when (read: when we were in our salad days at boarding school up in the Himalayan foot-hills), the amazing Anand V. Sinha writes a mouth-watering blog.

Here is his latest offering.  Do dip in here!

The balancing rock of Lalitpur

You are driving North of Lalitpur, along National Highway No. 26, headed towards Jhansi.  And there on your left in the near distance of a monsoonal morning you see a rock on another rock.  Big deal right? 

Well, it certainly is big!

I had seen the rock many a time on my way to and fro from our HBM Hospital Community Health and Development Programme field visits.   But on Monday I determined to take a closer look.

It's the monsoon here in Lalitpur, so there was plenty of mud to walk through as I meandered through the scrub towards the rock.

Coming close you realise just how big it is!

And how amazing that this large, odd shaped rock will stay put - rain, shine, hail or thunder - over all these years!  It is a 'balancing rock' and has been there for how many years?  Centuries? Millenia? without falling.

In a world where so much seems to be tipping and tripping, it is refreshing to see something so apparently precarious, but so solidly and utterly immovable as to have stood the test of time.

Would I like to try and tip this marvel?  Never!  I tend to be on the cautious side (I think at least) and seeing so much solid stone in such an apparently tip-worthy state... I have vivid thoughts of the great granite ending its year's of being upright by falling down on me and squashing my good-self.

So instead I take a quick tour around it.  The other side looks very different!

And just to give you a picture of the size involved, here is our dear Bharat Singh - who serves as one of our community coordinators in the HBM CHDP - and is an ace driver too.  Bharat kindly walked with me through the slush to take a look at the stone - and is a good way to help get a bit of a feel for just how big the stone is....

Presenting: the balancing rock of Lalitpur!

Down home on the Eicher farm...

We understand that our hardy Mennonite Eicher forbears left the old continent for the new expanses of Ontario in the late 1880s.  They were farmers and settled down to tilling the New World soil - and then their progeny moved out across the mid-west so that today you can still find plenty of Mennonite Eichers (some still farming too) across Indiana and Ohio and points west.

The tiny bit of the Eicher family that has been grafted into our dear land of Bharat 3 generations ago has not been very agrarian.  But could that be changing just a tiny bit?

Having moved to Lalitpur, our family is back in a pretty rural setting after 14 years in the big city. Today we live on a big spacious hospital campus in a ground-floor building... with a bit of space for a garden outside!

So lets take a little look at our new world...

We will start by going back in time.  This is what the 'Bethel Villa' looked when I was commuting between Thane and Lalitpur earlier this year.

We had to do a fair bit to get the venerable bungalow ready for the Eichers, including moving the kitchen from the back to the front and adding another toilet to the right of the entrance. 

About half-way through the rebuilding, this is what the future Eicher homestead looked like:

In mid April - four of us Eichers had a traumatic leaving from home as we were not given permission to take Yohan along with us by the authorities - a situation that frustratingly continues into today, and is one of the areas of our life where things are far from 'happy-happy.'

Our arrival in Lalitpur had its own set of hiccups and it was a few weeks before we finally moved into the (mainly) rennovated Bethel Villa.  As many of you gentle readers will have experienced - being the first to live in a 'new' house has its own joys.  An almost endless set of things that need to be adjusted (this door does not close,  that switch does not work, when the power goes off we are left in boiling heat darkness etc.).

And our arrival in May also coincided with one of the hottest summers in memory at the end of two years of scanty rainfall.  Each day was a new experience of what living inside a tandoori oven is like. 

Sauna?  We had one all around us - 24 hours.  I remember idly picking up an empty bottle in our living room - and being surprised at how hot it was.  Our flat cement roof absorbed heat and efficiently radiated it down into us. 

Garden?  A distant dream.

But what a difference some rain makes!

 In an amazingly short time, we have swapped worlds.  The arid, parched days are somewhere in a distant memory.  We have been transported into a cool green planet, with not only rain, but abundant, gushing rain, pouring down now, lightly drizzling then, a week without sunshine but the cool blessing of water all around.

It's time to break the soil, and we found an old man who agreed to dig up the plot of land outside Bethel Villa for us and plant a small hedge.   So at the end of the day, we found ourselves looking at a blank sheet - ready for things to be planted.  The few plants that came along with us (and who survived the Lalitpur summer grilling) remained clustered at our door.

Our first thought was to hire a 'mali' - a man of the soil to plant and tend our little patch of Eden.  The wizen old fellow who did the initial work was candidate no. 1, but said candidate proved surprisingly hard to pin down and a week later our plot was still barren and the rains were still coming.

So last weekend we swung into action.

Act 1.  Drive into town in our Papaya in search of 'plants.'   Find out more about the geography of Lalitpur.  Meet a plant seller who also seems to be a candidate for a political party.  End up at the nursery of the horticulture department - and yes, they have plants for sale.  Lots of them.  And at an unbelievable (for us Mumbai types) price of Rs. 10 per sapling (with a few at Rs. 20).   In Mumbai that would hardly buy you a small plastic bag of soil, let alone a whole plant.  we certainly were not complaining.

Did the horticulture folks have any vegetable seeds for sale?  No they did not - but they did have some Lady's Fingers (okhra) seeds and some Lauki (bottle gourd), which they kindly gave to us.  The price?  Just a smile.  Bless those dear men.

Act 2.  We lug our plants back and array them.  We borrow a mattock from our dear and experienced gardener colleagues Drs. Tony and Asangala Bishwas.  

Some local roses, a few hibiscus, two 'Raat ki Rani', two jasmine, we are set.   Plus we also have our Easter Lillies that have come up from Mumbai with us.  And we have our seeds to plant too.  

Now to delight of deciding where the plants should go.  Let's put that one here - and this one there.  A quick consultation, a hole is dug, the plastic bag cut off and in the plant goes.

We decide that the 5 by 5 m section just outside the kitchen will be a veggie plot.  Using a spoon, we dig little holes a hand-span a part and drop in the Lady's Finger seeds.  Will these little dried balls actually sprout?  They go into the soil and are covered.

The next day we decide to get some manure.  A local family gives us 3 big bags of goat-dropping based mulch.  The local hardware store equips us with some implements.  Mattock?  Sure.  Water pipe? Check.  The manure is spread and our new mattock mixes it into the soil.

Dr. Tony's garden gives us some local grass which we plant in little tufts to colonize the front portion. Will it grow to be a lawn?  Lets see.  Tony and Asangala also give us some maize seeds which we planted in the little portion on the right of the building.  The lily bulbs - when we get them out we realize just how many there are - get spread out liberally.

And the rain comes down again.  This time in buckets.  And so this is what the Bethel Villa looks after our first round of planting the Eicher garden.

These days when we wake up in the morning, it is usually to the greyness of a monsoonal day.

And we take a peek at the plants.

Glory be!  The seeds actually have sprouted!  Who would have thought.

Here is what the Ladies Fingers looked like a few days ago.

Humbling to know just how little we actually do in this great business of growing food.  Yes, we prepare the soil a bit (usually by tilling it).  Yes, we drop in the seeds and water and weed.  But the actual growing?  Those little balls of life which magically transform and start feeding from the soil and the light and the air and building themselves up and reaching for the sky in green-goodness-of-fruit-bearing?

Amazing grace.

Here is another evidence of the finger prints of a Master-Designer who makes all things well - courtesy of our front garden:

So there we have it.  A bit of green in our lives.  We are waiting for your visit to us Eichers at Bethel Villa - and hope that our little bit of Eden will be all the greener when we welcome you.

A last look when a bit of sun visited us recently.  See you soon!

Auden for the second half of 2016

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

- W.H. Auden

Quoted in: The Centrifugal Experience of Knowledge

so how is your father doing?

I just got back from another short Mussoorie stint.  Almost everywhere I go, I get asked the question.  "How is your father doing?"

Sometimes it is followed up with a statement: "He is OK, isn't he?"

A few also tell me that they are praying for him.

How do you respond to the question on hand.  The easy way out is to mumble a "yes", put on a smile, and move on.  Allow the questioner the comfort of knowing that all is well.

Reality is harder.  Even asking Dad the question is hard.  What is he supposed to say?  To give a minute detailed description of the various pains he is going through?  To share what it is like to have difficulty digesting food and have a family looking at you at every meal, hoping that you will eat more?  To tell about his times alone with God - talking to Him and praying in the night hours?

I have at times told people that 'everything is not OK' - but that God is with us despite it all.

That Dad continues to be positive.  And that we are working on helping to alleviate the pain - but that we are walking in new territory here.

Most of us want things tied down in neat bundles.   In crisp categories.  You are either well or you are sick.  But can you be both?

Dad is walking down that path now.  He spends much of his day in naps.  But also is up and about for meals.  He reads God's word and prays.  Most days he takes a small walk if the weather is dry outside.  He takes his medicines regularly.  He tries to eat well.  Mum has been making special meals for him - and the portions are small, but we are happy for every meal Dad has.  He and Mum look out their bedroom window at scenes like this:

photo courtesy Christa Eicher - as are all the photos in this post other than the first - taken by Bhagat Pun

Alternately, Dad gets to see God's glory in small spaces courtesy the flowers that Mum lovingly curates in the garden or up on the small 'green house' on the terrace of Shanti Kunj.

We are currently still working on what levels of pain medication Dad should be on.  We have for the last 2 weeks started him on low-dose morphine, and have increased it a bit this week.  Getting delayed release morphine-sulphate has not been easy, but we are working on it.  In the mean-time, Dad keeps a close account of when he gets up at night, when he takes extra pain-killers, what he has eaten.  All of this helps in making these days as blessed as possible for Mum and Dad.

So how is my father doing?  Well, the outer man is wasting away, but the inner man is being renewed every day.  Each and every sunrise that Dad experiences is a miracle.  We are grateful for every opportunity we have to be with him.  The knowledge that the shadow of death is nearer instead of some far-off-distant-future-never-never-event is blessedly helpful in many ways.  It brings an added joy to every conversation, an added tweak to every good-bye.

But most of all, Dad has been ready to meet his Lord Jesus for years.  If there is someone ready to meet his Maker, it is my dear father.

We know, and absolutely believe, that our Lord Jesus can remove every single cancer cell from Dad's body and give him another 15 years of life.  Why stop there - God has the power to give 100 more years, make that 200 hundred.   And this loving Lord of ours does not in anyway look down on us if we ask Him for more life for Dad.  But, we also know that an awful lot of people have already prayed and continue to be praying for Dad daily - and the cancer continues to work its way through Dad's system.  Will we only receive blessings from the Lord and naught else?  Can there be goodness while walking into shadows too?  We know that God is sovereign - and He is good.  And so we gratefully receive whatever He has for Dad.  Getting another 2 days is a miracle.  So is 2 weeks or 2 months or 2 years... or 20.  We don't have the power to even grow a single extra hair on our heads (I should know!).

So how is Dad doing?  I would say, that given all that Dad is experiencing these days, that he is faithfully walking his path with the joy of the Lord.  With a peace that passes all understanding.  With a faith that continues to glow, especially in the darker valleys that he and Mum are exploring these days.

Walking along side

The big volvo bus of the Uttarkhand Transport Corporation eases out of the Interstate Bus Terminus in Delhi.  Asha is sitting next to me as the cool of the AC gradually wicks away the sweat of muggy pre-monsoonal Delhi.  

Over the next 8.5 hours the bus will ease out through the urban sprawl of Delhi and its satellite cities, squeezing past various roads and other public and private construction sites.  We pick up a bit of speed once we get past the urban areas, and finally get out to fields of sugar cane and poplar plantations.  The road is wider than it was 31 years ago when I took a similar bus trip, but not as clustered with eateries and temporary fruit and curio stalls that seem to clot this lifeline like a sclerotic artery.

In August of 85 I took a bus the same distance and for a similar purpose.  It was a monsoonal August day and my father was sitting next to me as our bus left the Centaur Hotel outside New Delhi airport.  An hour earlier I had my first contact with my future Woodstock fellow students.  I was starting boarding school for the first time in 11^th grade, and we were the ‘new students’ – and most of us had parents with us.  The school had chartered a bus for all the newbies and we were told to report 3 days before the main school started.  And so with my Dad next to me I was looking at fellow newcomers to boarding and wondering who of them I would be friends with as the greenness of the unfamiliar countryside passed outside our grinding non-AC bus.

Yesterday it was I who was the father.  And next to me is this amazing 15 year old who got a miraculous admission into Wynberg almost in the middle of their school-year.  As she dozes a bit on the long bus journey I have to wonder at who she is becoming.  Where has time gone?  Can it really be that Asha will be away from us for the next 5 months as she burns through her 10^th grade?

The bus to Woodstock ended up with us tumbling out to the greyness and dampness of monsoonal Mussoorie.  Yesterday’s trip had us in the back seat of a taxi up from Dehra Dun, driving through the misty darkness with the headlights swiping by the blessed dark green trees and past more garish advertisements for hotels than you can shake a stick at.  Asha is dozing, curled up to my lap, and then the sudden sweetness of the Raat-ki-rani flower pierces the darkness.

A mobile call when we pass the Landour bazar means that we are met at the top of the hill by Vickey who helps carry bags down to Shanti Kunj.   I came up with my Dad as a stranger in a strange land.  Asha’s situation is of a different shade, she has come to Shanti Kunj every year since she was 2.  And it is from Shanti Kunj that she leaves this afternoon to go into boarding for this 5 month spell till the end of November.

Before she goes down today, I have another task to do.  This time it is me who is accompanying Dad and not the other way round.  We are being driven down to his palliative care doctor at the pain clinic of SMI hospital in Dehra Dun.   Dad had gone with me into a new territory as I stepped into Woodstock School – while today I have the joy of taking Dad’s special prescription paper and being driven around Dehra Dun trying to find sustained-release morphine-sulphate tablets.  It takes quite some time and we ultimately do not find exactly what we want, but I leave the main medical distributer with 30 tablets of morphine in my pocket.  That is the easy part, the harder one is accompanying Dad on his path of pain.  After supper tonight he has a sharp pain in his chest and so we give him another 5 mg between his regular doses.  It’s all very very new territory for us.

As I write this Asha is in her dorm.  One big room.  40 odd girls from the 9^th and 10^th standards.   We left just after 3 for the quick drive down to WAS.  Except that is wasn’t quick.  One index of our nation’s wealth is the width of the SUVs that her prosperous citizens drive.  Mussoorie is a wonderful place to be, but Landour’s road (notice the singular) is narrow with a steep drop off.  This means that many places are too narrow for 2 large vehicles to pass.  Most of the time you or the other vehicle back up a bit and then the two cars squeeze by.  Not so this afternoon.  There was a traffic clog of epic proportions.  We waited for 20 mins basically stationary.  Then a few vehicles slipped by us.  A gain of 30 odd meters saw us stuck again – along with at least 30 other vehicles both ways.  

Asha had to report to her dorm by 4 PM.  We made a snap decision.  Walk it out.  Oma stayed with the small suitcase and violin in the vehicle along with Bhagat who was driving us.  Asha and I clutched umbrellas and set off at a brisk walk to do the 2+ kms to WAS.  We huffed and puffed and made it to the dorm and signed Asha in on time with seconds to spare.  Oma and the luggage followed later.

And so another two days in the beautiful and selectively messy parts of our lives conclude.  Our roles change and shift with us taking on responsibilities and experiences previously limited to our parents.  Likewise, we see our kids living out some of the steps we have taken earlier - as well as moving into some paths we have not trodden. And we see our parents walking into areas of their lives, and experiences that we have no living memory of.  

It is such a true comfort to know that we do have a Father who loves us very much, and allows us to mirror and reflect His love to each other.  Whatever part of our journey, He has gone before and is walking alongside us, like Aslan walking beside Sashta all through dark night journey along a mountain path.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

(Isaac Watts)