The Plight Of A Disease Of Grim

By Gunpreet Singh Sachdeva

Today we lost him.

Or did we really?

His chances for a good death were trim

Or was his death peaceful really?

Maybe he forgot what peace is

Maybe he forgot what death is?

Or did he really?

We don't know.

He forgot all of our names

He forgot all the basic games

He forgot what was his job's real cause

He forgot who he really was.

He was a good man

He was a great man

Or was he?

Now we don't really know.

He never scolded me his whole life

Always taught me things without the knife

And just before his death

He scolded me thrice

For not being nice

To that imaginary person wise

Which I couldn't see to his surprise.

Once he stood at brink of a flowing river

Asking for the money bank

Calling it a riverbank

Asking for the petrol tank

To store his money as shanks.

He got lost once

It was only once though.

He couldn't get back to the house

Kept on walking in circles

Like a trapped mouse

In a completely open house

Which has no doors or windows

Or without any latches or crows.

Someone known guided him back

And he walked like a heavy sack.

He was lost just once

Or was he really?

I remember him pacing at 3 in the morning

I saw him restless at 3 in the morning

But I had no idea how to help him

I wanted that he should take good sleep

He's exhausted he needs to rest deep

But something unusual kept him up

And precisely he had forgotten me

So I couldn't really step up.

Sometimes his words confused us

Or he himself was like a confused bus

Who didn't know where to go

And when to go.

Sometimes he asked for a thing

And then it was something else in a blink.

He couldn't add up numbers

And so let us not get into the memory chambers

Sometimes replacing me with mom

In a memory that just had me.

Isn't that just crushing of your old glee?

Towards the end, he even forgot

What was the reaction he got

When mom had borne me.

I won't say he was a bad man

He was really a good man

But his mind just gave up

When his body grew old enough

And he didn't die

The same man he was born.

Or did he?

We would never know.

By Gunpreet Singh Sachdeva