Do I really have to say goodbye?
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
I don’t want to say goodbye, not yet…
I was driving my old decrepit car when I got the text message from my brother. He said for me to get to the hospital soon. I was on my way even before that message came and just at that moment I knew mother had gone. I did not see her take her last breath, nor did i witness the drama of reviving her with that cold machine that shot electric current throughout her body.
But the night before, as my mother lay unconscious on her hospital bed, I bid her goodbye. I don’t know why I was so brave that night, and so calm as I whispered to her that it’s alright now. She was in so much pain from all the tubes and wires connected to her body, and the constant drawing of blood, until I thought she had nothing to give.
I held her body and told her how much i love her, not knowing if she could hear, but hoping that she does, that she did. They made me go home that night. There was no use getting myself all worked up, they said. Nothing would change…
And so morning came and you’d think that there was nothing peculiar about taking another breath while my mother laid in her hospital bed just the other night, with kuya and ate watching over her. I don’t remember now if it was kuya or ate that came up to me when I got to the hospital and said- “wala na si nanay”. But those words forever changed my life. Forever changed me.
How do you lose a mother I thought? One never loses a mother. She’s invincible, always strong and brave for her little girl. I remember how they restrained me from getting to her where the white sheets covered her still body. And I remember how the attendants tried to tell me that the “body” should have been taken away by now and preserved.
I shouted then, so much like the way they do it in the movies, but this time it’s for real, and it’s my mother being taken away from me- lifeless. Not breathing. I wanted the earth to swallow me. I wanted to die then. But I lived and it just felt so wrong.
I wish that I did not listen to them. That I stayed the night. That I should have prayed harder. That I should have done more… But there was just nothing I could do. I was not super girl after all. I was just this little girl-lost and I wanted my nanay…
I really did not want to say goodbye, not yet…
