The fluorescent lights gave the room a vibrant appeal. They’re bright like the sun. One was situated in front of my grandfather, who had been lying on the hospital bed for two weeks. I saw him look at the lights.
“At last, we can go home. It is morning!” my grandfather said.
It was two in the morning. The sun was still in his bed snoring. The air was chilly even if the windows were closed.
“It’s just two in the morning,” I told him.
“What? Can’t you see the sun? Pack up the things as your grandmother is waiting for us,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if I should smile or be sad. I looked at my grandfather. My eyes were misty. My mother was sleeping on the chair, her head on the edge of the bed. We both were weary but one has to stay up at nighttime to look over my grandfather who was suffering from lymphatic cancer. As I had my internship as a medical technology student in that public hospital I am used to staying up at night. I knew all the wards and most of the staff. We had no problem getting access through medical and laboratory examinations. While other patients had to wait for awhile to have their blood samples extracted I did the extraction on my grandfather myself. I looked at my grandfather once again. He was still staring at the lights as if studying it.
“Wake your mother. There is no time to loose,” he said. He tried to get up. But he had gone frail. His once sturdy body, that once massive body which we liken to an oak tree, had shriveled. His legs were swollen. He could not eat solid food. I looked at the man who once carried me on his back when the tide rose waist-deep. I am his first born grandson and he always took me to school when I entered first grade. He even carried me on his back when I was in high school. That moment it was my time to repay him. My mother has eight other siblings but no one had even offered to replace us for a night, that we may regain our strength and attend to my grandmother who was recovering from a stroke.
“Grandpa, you need to calm down. We will eventually go home. We had already asked the doctor’s permission. You will soon see grandma,” I told him and raised my hand to let him see the time on my watch.
He would not budge. “Nurse, Nurse!” he yelled. Everyone in the ward looked at us. I turned red with shame. My mother woke up and tried to console my grandfather. He would not believe that it was just past two in the morning.
“Let me sit down,” he said. As soon as my mother and I positioned him on one corner of the bed he slipped to the floor.
“I want to go home,” he said. “Where’s my bag?”
We watched him crawl on the floor. He did not want us to touch him. The nurse came and shook her head. She knew that my grandfather had been sleeping during the day and all awake all night. She understood our condition and asked the other patients and their families to understand.
“Where are you going, Sir?” the nurse asked.
My grandfather did not look up but stopped crawling as it made him tired. “I am going home, young lady. My wife is waiting for me. My daughter and grandson will take me home,” he said.
“But Sir it just two in the morning,” she said. She motioned us to help her put my grandfather back to bed. He calmed down. He had great respect to medical people. He even agreed to go back to sleep. We sighed.
At nine in the morning we were in the lobby of the hospital. My grandfather was on a wheelchair, his bag which contained his personal belongings on his lap.
***
We never said a word on board the taxi on our way home but there was a glow in my grandfather’s eyes. He and grandma had been living with us for quite awhile.
My grandparents greeted each other like long lost lovers when we arrived home. They had been married for more than fifty years. I grew up in their house which was surrounded with fruit-bearing trees. They once had a vast vegetable plantation.
He asked for his favorite soup and requested me to feed him. He slept soundly that night. I thought by then that my grandfather would recover from his burden. But at 2 a.m. the next day he woke my mother saying he could not breathe. He had just recovered from pneumonia a week before. We all panicked. My father and brother got the car ready to transport him back to the hospital.
“No. I won’t go back there. Never!” my grandfather said. He was gasping for breath.
We gathered around his bed hoping that he will recover. My father held him while he was sitting up. He faced my grandmother who was sitting on the opposite side of the bed and his tears ran down his cheeks. “My Leonisa, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I have to leave you. But I know we will be together again,” my grandfather said to my grandmother.
My grandmother did not cry. She was a strong lady who had survived life’s turmoil. My mother, on the other hand, was crying out so loud. My brother went out to the balcony. He tried to call my mother’s married brother and sister who were living near us but they didn’t come.
“My Papa. My Papa!” my mother said the words over and over. She touched his father’s face and cried in anguish.
“Here they are,” my grandfather said. He enumerated the invisible beings who he said had come to fetch him, his dead brothers and sisters. I watch my grandfather slowly slip away. In that inevitable moment I stood there helpless. I did not know what to do or what to say. What I remember was I tried to console my mother.
My grandfather looked at the wall and cried, “Motherrrrrrr!!!” And breathe his last. I hugged my grandmother and cried. It was my first to witness someone die. But what hurt most was that it was my own loved one. Though I tried to accept the regality of mortality the burning lesson will never leave: that death is a significant aspect of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment