A Very Memorable Night

Tonight was A Very Memorable Night in the family. My mother was in the Manila Doctors Hospital waiting for me to arrive. I rushed after the office hour with my co-employee because I don’t know to go there alone. It was the only night wherein I left my son since his birth.

My mother came to our house on the 27th day February 2004 a day after I gave birth to my son with my father and older brother. It was eight months after my father has been operated twice at the Manila Sanitarium Hospital. Her eyes and skin were yellowish. My brother and I were hoping she had only hepatitis.
The following day they went to the Manila Doctors Hospital to diagnose her. The doctor declared that she has a Pancreatic Cancer and she can live three more months longer. It was the most painful experience I ever had. My mother will die soon.

The family decided to let her undergo to by-pass operation. But she needs to be hospitalized from time to time. If times needed her to go Manila, my brother brought her from Calapan City in an Ambulance he borrowed from the hospital where he works. Every time she confined in Manila she will always stay with us to rest before they travelled to Mindoro. I witnessed her suffering but still she hides to us whenever she feels the pain. She will go inside the room and lay down faced on the wall.

Day after day, I’m afraid to receive any call from the family. I don’t want to hear any news that my mother was gone. Then came July 6, 2004, they brought her at the Manila Doctors Hospital. This time she can no longer stay in my house after her confinement. She wants us to visit her at the hospital for she has many things to say in us. My father and two older brothers were there in the room. My aunts and cousins resides near was all there. This was the first time they all present there.

Thank God, I was able to talk to her. She expressed her will clearly to me to take good care of my son. After my conversation with her I talk to our relative but I always go to her bed. I was standing beside her bed in the ward room with one of my cousin when suddenly she looked straight in absence and finally lost her breath. The doctors revived her before my other older brother came with the money he borrowed for the hospitalization.

My mother still alive in the help of the machines until the following day but we can no longer talk to her. At around 10 o’clock am of July 7, 2004, the doctor declared her dead. I helped my brother to process the billing then we escort the hospital attendant as they brought her body in the morgue room. After that, I bid goodbye to go home to prepare our things to my father who was very sad outside the hospital building. He was now alone, how lonely his life would be. I witnessed how they lived happily in spite of scarcity. My mother was now gone.