The Only Thing I Regret Not Doing in My 21 Years of Life

An agonizing lesson I shall always carry deep within

1 AM and pitch dark save for the Emergency department’s blinking neons. A few feet away, hugging herself, my mom’s trembling like a leaf — because of the chilling air or the pain, I don’t know.

Shrugging off my zipped hoodie and wrapping it around her, “Let me go check real quick”, I say to which she weakly nods. Walking in, the PPE kit ensconced white coats huddled around my grandfather makes my heart skip a beat.

Ushered into the counseling room, “We need you to sign a consent form. We’ll try our best, but he doesn’t look too good”, breaks the doctor with a sympathetic smile. With a dead “Oh. Sure” and a sunken heart, I mechanically scribble on the dreadful piece of paper.

My mind’s in a daze as I walk across the corridor to the withered, gasping man that was my grandfather. This couldn’t be him.

The badminton ace who could beat guys 30 years younger. That sprightly machine who could breezily march up to the third floor, heaving a ton of luggage. The source of the booming laughter that would echo around the house.

This wasn’t him. Must be a cruel joke. The moment I go back home, he’ll scream, “Surprise!”, and make the house ring with that booming laughter of his.

Contorting my face into a smile, “Gramps, the doctors say you’ll get well. Just a matter of 2 or 3 days. Get ready to be beaten 10–0 in Badminton,” I exclaim. As his nod and hopeful smile destroy my facade, I march back out. Time for another facade.

“Mom, the doctor says he’s in good shape. Should be out and kicking in no time”. As radiance surges through her, an inexplicable cold settles deep within me.

The drive back home took forever. Just until the past week, the pandemic had been all fun and play. Masks and social distancing were just irritating protocols. But my own grandfather? And for the first time, the nightmarish gravity of it sunk into me.

Sleep? How could I sleep when my grandpa was on the brink of teetering into a never-ending sleep.

He will get well. He has to. It just doesn’t make any sense. Mere covid can’t extinguish that sprightly soul. And holding onto this crumb of hope, I slip into an uneasy sleep.

The next day, the words “He’s showing positive signs of recovery” make me squeeze my phone in excitement and grin like an idiot. With 50 lbs lifted off my heart, I call him and the clearly better voice destroys another 50.

But death is a rather sneaky fellow that arrives when you least expect him to. And its harbinger came the next day.

I lift the phone, and my face turns the color of chalk. “Dress up, we need to visit the hospital”, I tell my mom. “Why, what’s wrong?”. Fighting my internal flood gates, “Ah they will tell us in person”, I manage robotically. The moment I latch the bathroom door, the gates break open.

How could this be real? My grandfather. More like my father since the day I lost my real one. And him no more? This was beyond unfair. I hadn’t spent enough time with him. After decades of expending blood and sweat, his efforts were just coming to fruition — my first job was about to start and my brother had just started medical school.

Determinism? Causality? Freaking bullshit. How could such a senseless universe be deterministic? Such a cruel death for a soul that worked all his life and meant no one any harm.

The tears dry out, but my body refuses to stop. Prepared for death? How dumb was I to think I was? Nobody ever is.

This time, I wanted the drive to be forever. Just this moment stretched to infinity. But reality is a cruel sadist — the hospital draws into view much sooner than usual.

My mind’s a blur and I stand numbly as I break the news to my mom. Tears of pain and disbelief stream down her face, but mine have dried out. The corridor stretches forever and the sight of the dead man that used to be my grandfather stirs within me a cold that put the mortuary to shame.

“Sir, you’re getting too close. Stand at least 6 feet away.”, calls out the attendant. Ah! Social distancing. Never had it seemed eerier than it did then. The universe was clearly a chaotic mess of meaninglessness — a good man dying an untouchable death in an isolated ward without a single loved one close by in his last moments.

That booming voice would never echo again. He would never beat me 10–0 in badminton again. We would never concoct the silliest of jokes and giggle like schoolgirls again.

Such a weird thing, death. One moment, the person is there and the next; he isn’t. It’s like magic — a cruelly distorted version of the vanishing trick.

And at that moment, if I could have known how to reverse this particular trick, I would have given anything.

Tears dry out. Pain fades away. The cogs of time continue to work. The Earth continues to spin. And life goes on. But regrets stay — and this one I know I will never get rid of.

It’s funny how easy it is to take for granted the existence of someone. If the grim reaper fancies, that person could just vanish the next moment. But the cruel twist is that it takes losing someone to realize their value.

All those missed phone calls. The pain behind his incessant “Someone’s become too busy to give this oldie sometime, eh?”. And my sporadic phone calls, often only to ask for money. And his promptness in transferring it within 30 minutes despite beseeching him to do it at his convenience.

Be it raining, him just having gotten back home, or preparing for his afternoon nap, he will do it. Some might call it overbearing love. But love it was, some of the most real I have had the good fortune to be on the receiving side of.

Ah man, those rip apart my innards.

They’re scars I will always carry. I deserve to carry them. My grandfather’s last gift, the silver chain around my neck, shall always be a part of me as my Memento Mori — the reminder that nobody lives forever and death can come knocking any time.

My grandfather also took along quite a few of my core beliefs, mainly determinism, to his grave. It was a harsh and conflicting phase mentally, as all epiphanies are.

I forget his face sometimes. But when I do, I focus all my mental power to recall even the tiniest of details. I cannot forget him. I ignored him in his life. The least I can do is honor his memories in death.

The loved ones I still have? I will greedily spend time with them. Return calls when missed. Talk not just when I have a need. Hoggishly hoard memories and reminisce about them from time to time.

Memories are, after all, the only anchors you will have to them when they aren’t around anymore. And in our cruel world, the only moment they are guaranteed to be around is in the present moment.

Even the next isn’t.