A Day Never Forgotten

6:45

He lay on the bed before me, his wrinkled hand clutching the towel on his chest. His big brown eyes stared at the bear ceiling. For one who didn't know him, he was wasting his time. For me personally, he was looking at the endless sky and waiting to join it once again. Waiting to leave his dreadful body. Waiting to leave his misery.

His mother sat next to him, looking much younger than him, much older than her true age, 35. Her eyes had destroyed their beauty and had developed wrinkles under them, due to her constant crying. Her husband tried to console her, putting his hand over hers, but it was of no use, the woman, Shardha, broke further down, her tears tracing across her cheeks and dripping down her chin.

I understood their pain, not completely but a tinge of it. Who on this earth could see their 14 year old son die looking like a 90 year old man?

The old boy looked at his mother, his oxygen masked face gave away a slight smile, a smile which might never be seen again. 'Thank you.' He whispered in a low shrill voice.

It didn't take much time to realize what he was thankful for. He was thankful for the affection Shardha gave him, thankful for the fatherly love Ajay showed him. Thankful that even though he was adopted, he was never shown any dark feelings.

Ayushman, which meant one with a long life. His name itself was hypocritical. He, a man with progeria, a man who started becoming old from the day he was born, whose cells had functioned wrongly in the forming of telomeres, named a man with a long life?

Ajay, trying to be strong, held his son's hand. 'Thank you, Aayu.' He said holding his gaze for a moment, and then he broke down.

I sat there near the window, still. I wasn't able to move wasn't the case in my situation. My situation was I should not move.

Aayu loved that crazy side I possessed, he always said, 'your crazy side was something to die for.'

My reply was simple, 'I am not the crush-type' and Aayu just laughed and sighed saying that one thing I hated most, 'It isn't I or he or they who decide things about you, its you, Serina.'

And today when everything was in flames, when he was under ventilation, he did nothing but stared at the ceiling. He said, its he who'll decide things about himself and at that point when he needed the decision the most he was not even trying to fight back.

I stared at him as his eyes made their way to me. Those eyes which had often talked on his behalf. But they were numb, they spoke nothing.

I wanted him to say something, to smile, to pick his hand up, to walk, to play ludo with me but he did none of those things, he just stared.

My eyes wetted and my tears blurred Aayu's face. At that point I forgot so much, forgot myself and forgot everyone else.

'Life is never too short or long, it's how you want to live it.' Was the quote Aayu's journal contained. He was one of my friends who loved reading my novels, who had not read Harry Potter or Paper Boats, but had chosen to read Sherlock Holmes and Dan Brown. He was a second me, apart from the other two me's I knew.

I tried not to cry but I could not stop. He was fading away, he was dying and nothing could stop it.

One last time Aayu looked at me and then as if he knew he was breathing his last breath he closed his eyes and let the worlds close behind him.

The ventilators beep was heard fiercely for a few seconds, the doctor was called, the room was filled with useless mourns and cries of Shardha, but nothing stopped the ventilator, nothing exempt the doctor.

Today, after doing his rites, we all returned home, a home which had lost its life.

Every now and then I could imagine what Aayu would have felt at that moment and how he might have been if he had lived a little more, but the truth is bitter, he would have bern pained even more.

Aayu went, but taught me something very important, and when I look at his photograph on the walls of his house, the one thing I remember is his lessons.

Life is not what you make, its what comes to you, you have to decide how to live it.

Ayu did not die at a young age, because even in those 14 years he lived, he lived to the fullest and that was all that mattered in the end.

I do not know whether he chose to leave or whether he had to, for me Aayu was a miracle, a miracle which will never leave my heart.