Baba is sick, sans an illness

Baba is sick without an illness. It's called old age. It is shattering to fathom what he must be going through. His brain, over 9 decades old has stopped making sense of things, living— non-living. His memory is wiped out, he’s started hallucinating, he chats with imaginary people, is it because we weren’t there to talk to him? It breaks me. When we tell people, he’s suffering, he’s sick, almost everybody says, yeah must be old-age, very indifferently as if it's okay to suffer if you’re old and weak and fragile. It hurts me, but I know it's not their fault. When I was growing up, he had hundreds of stories to tell us, one can imagine he was born in 1922, he’s seen everything,  he lived in the era that we studied in history! We would sit around him and he’d tell us his college stories, of India’s struggle for freedom, of uniting one India post Independence, of his office days under the British empire, of how he raised his five sons, sans any money but loads of values, one could see his eyes glitter when he used to talk about the bygone era. But now, he remembers nothing.  He doesn’t remember my name. He doesn’t remember what year is it, he doesn’t remember anything that he’s experienced in the past 95 years, they say, it's the old age. Indeed, it is, but imagine the suffering. He was living with memories all his life and what does he have now? Is it okay to suffer if you’re old? I feel helpless, like never before. It sucks. Why not me? Why him? Why can’t I change places? What do I do to make him happy? He has swollen foot but doctors say, they cannot treat it, because it's apparently natural, its old age. It's something to do with the kidneys, they say. Why can’t we help him? The other day, a very independent 95-year-old man shat his pants, and cried of embarrassment, what do we say to comfort him? How? It breaks me in the most unimaginable way. It’s like saying a thousand goodbyes together. Yes, human body is fragile, world is unfair, shit happens, but this is soul crushing. May we have the strength and wisdom to make him feel loved and special while we can. He is a major part of who we all are. He is the root to the tree touching skies, he has nourished us, all his life selflessly, he is the reason we all exist, of who we are and what we’ve all become. May we gather the strength and patience to hold him and not let him fall because old or not, nobody deserves this.