DEATH OF AN OLD LADY

DEATH OF AN OLD LADY
July 20, 2002

An old lady is dying, which is not unusual. She has a son and a daughter on her first marriage. She is twice widowed, which again is not unusual. What is quite unusual is t ht she is surrounded around her deathbed in the hospital by people not related to her.

Her daughter is in the United States of America but cannot yet come home as her passport has expired. Her son is detained at the provincial jail with a murder case over his head for supposedly murdering his uncle as alleged by his cousins.

All three of t he dying lady’s brother died earlier as well as her second husband. None of her true nephews and nieces has paid her a visit. All her sisters-in-law are sickly too. But her nieces and nephews with her first husband are supporting her fully together with a few close relatives.

This lady who is now in the brim of death used to belonged to a very influential and popular family in the community. Their big mansion, inherited from her great grandfather who has been Gobernadorcillo for several terms, was a venue for many political, social and even religious events. It was where many evacuees, including Americans, temporarily stayed during the breakout of the Japanese Occupation. But its historical value went with it when it was demolished, as it could no longer be maintained.

The comatose old lady, during her younger days at the height of her popularity was beautiful, kind, hospitable, helpful and very accommodating.
She seemed to possess all the good character traits. When she was widowed at age 23, many well known and handsome suitors offered her marriage in spite of her having a son and a daughter but she rejected them all in deference to their father whom she loved so much. She could have enjoyed a lie of luxury and fame.

She was one of the first few who moved to Manila to monitor the studies of her son and daughter, when moving to Manila wasn’t yet common practice. Still young and inexperienced she met uncommon challenges in the jungle of the unkind city.

The old ancestral mansion was left in the province since all her brothers were also in t he big city attending to their own jobs and families. She rented an apartment, admitted boarders and bed spacers, even put up a small eatery to support the studies and needs of her kids. The ancestral mansion in the province became the temporary abode of several families and transient boarders from other towns.

Moving to Manila is not always a promising venture as this lady discovered soon enough although going back to the province was not a good alternative either. She found herself in a limbo of uncertainties so she kept on trying her hands on different experiments to find way to earn money that led her into meeting people who didn’t teach her any better to improve her living condition. Through them they learned the intricacies of hulugan, paluwagan and even the temporary used of bouncing checks as well as the art of telling a lie until she found herself falling in a deep bottomless pit.

Frustration, disappointment and possibly extreme loneliness tempted her to marry a Law reviewer, one of her boarders. Her son simply couldn’t accept her decision. He stowed away and got acquainted with happy –go-lucky youngsters who, like him, have their own personal problems to drown. He became a drunkard while his sister also got confused like her mother. Even their religiosity was greatly affected. Praying for miracles that did not materialize brought them far from the Church.

They went home to the province to the now dilapidated ancestral mansion. This dying lady started a new business but previous loans were never completely settled until even her inherited properties were sold one by one and she found herself living a life of misery and poverty. When her daughter was employed with the Philippine Airlines she could have enjoyed the privileges offered to parents but she could not leave her husband and her son together just to avoid any possible friction that she feared could be catastrophic. Her husband who never passed the Bar examination, instead of helping her, turned out to be an added burden until his death when she finally discovered that he had four children with another woman. Her son never completely recovered from his vice that he learned to love as a soothing substitute to a broken life. He became a drug user, sometimes too unreasonable and too unbearable, only his mother can really love him. And his mother, to compensate for her unacceptable decision when she married the second time, spoiled her already neurotic son. He was totally misunderstood by his relatives and you cannot blame them for he turned too irresponsible, carefree, and immature while his mother continue working night and day to hold on to her native candy business that hardly support their ordinary needs.

The younger brother of this dying lady got fed up with his nephew who turned drug user. Misunderstanding widens until one time while this dying lady was sick and the fed-up uncle failed to visit her, the drug-user nephew drowned himself with beer, went to his uncle to confront him why he wasn’t visiting his sick sister. The uncle who possibly thought that his nephew was going to attack him had heart attack and died.

The drug user was sued for murder by his aunt, the second wife of his uncle who died of heart attach. That is why he is detained at the provincial jail. In jail he never experienced eating the kind of food offered in prison as his mother tried all means just to see to it that her son was “feeling at home”. After three years in detention, the children of the uncle who died were already willing to forgive their cousin under certain conditions. It was at this point that the lady had stroke that quickly led to coma. The stress and excitement of her sons impending release from jail weakened her.

As I am writing this, the lady is in a very critical condition. She is kept alive by life supports such as intravenous fluids with medications, oxygen, suction machine, feeding tube, etc.,hoping that her daughter who is abroad would see her alive, Her son was allowed to visit her a few days ago. When she dies her house shall be taken over by the local bank as it has been foreclosed a long time ago. She was just allowed to stay there for humanitarian reason.

She is surrounded by people not her relatives. The priest has given her the extreme unction or Sacrament of Grace. She is breathing faintly, her eyes are hallowed, her temples are sunken and her nose is pinched, the Hippocratic facie that signals impending death. Why could a lady known to be so kind and so helpful and so accommodating be dying this way??? But we are not to question God’s wisdom.

NOTE: She died at dawn of July 21, 2002. Both her daughter and son whom she so much loved were not on her side. None of her blood relatives were around, but God in His greatness would give His Mercy, as she too deserves peace in the Kingdom of the Lord.