Bharat S. M. Karavadra

I Hope I Delivered My Promise!

Monday, December 24th, 2007

For those of you who don’t know, my gran passed away about a month ago and I have been busy trying to move on since then.

With respect to the title of this article and what I’ve been doing over the past few years, I hope the following text of my speech at gran’s cremation makes sense.

Thank you.

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Thank you all for coming today, and thank you to those of you who have supported us over the past week.

However, I would like to give the greatest thanks to all the family, our relatives, friends, and the doctors and nurses who gave my gran the priceless help and support after her condition was diagnosed, about 11 years ago, and giving her these great and miraculous 11 years of life.

I will never forget when the consultants at the hospital told us that they couldn’t do any more for my gran, in terms of a medical cure, and so I asked the ultimate question… How long does gran have to live?

The doctor said it could be weeks or months but in fact it became 2 and a half years, and we owe a lot of this life to the team at St Mary’s Hospice, who have been my gran’s angels, and even they, couldn’t understand how she continued to live.

Well, I can understand why. My gran had the strongest will power that I know – she wanted to live and live she did. She carried on looking after and physically supporting my granddad when he was alive, and for those of you who knew him, this was no easy task, even for the fittest and healthiest person. She even carried on cooking him great meals knowing that she could not swallow food herself. She was an impeccable wife.

My grand dad – he also had a lot of will power, but his making was his great faith in God and specifically in looking after gran, and when he realised that his life may be coming to an end, he once told me that if anything should happen to him, I have to look after gran.

I promised my grand dad I would, and grand dad if you can hear me, I hope I’ve fulfilled my promise. I did the best I could.

But… I know that gran wanted to live a bit, and experience new things after grand dad died. Who can blame her… she devoted her late life to grand dad, and after he had gone, she, like anyone else, WOULD want to live a little, it was HER time.

Gran did live, not a little but quite a lot, but her condition prevented her from travelling to places, but more so eating food that she really wanted to eat.

Gran, the burden on your ability to experience life has now gone. You can now experience things that we can only dream of. Thank you for all the blessings you have given us. Go live a lot, and say hello to grand dad. We will always love you both.

Thank you.

P.S. Grand dad… Happy Birthday!