cocoro

Ah, Philippines

I was holding editorial meetings the whole day so I didn't notice my mother's text message until late in the afternoon (in the middle of yet another meeting).

"There's a coup?" I blurted out.

Everyone else in the table looked up from gloomily pondering GFDL vs. Philippine copyright law. "RLY?"

(It should be staff policy for people to check their cellphones more often, not to mention actual news websites. XD; The writers are busy preparing for a special feature on the Filipino Christmas so books and almanacs have lately been obscuring computer screens. But more on that later).

Anyway -- I gather from reading blogs and message boards that the predominant reaction to this latest attempt to save the Philippines is a collective eyeroll. These d00dz should also read more Shounen Jump or something. They've got the messianic complex down pat but need to work on, you know, the logic thing, since they don't have genius ghosts from the Heian era hovering around giving them advice, shinigami dads, or demonic alter egos to scare the shit out of people in lieu of making them see reason. Giant mechs could probably do the trick but they don't have those too, DO THEY.

In other words: Major, major fail.

Watching the coup coverage was pretty embarrassing. I think I sort of get Antonio Trillanes' predilection for choosing ritzy hotels as his headquarters from which he and his cohorts can launch their ineptly written and thoroughly uninspiring missives to the Filipino people. The reports did mention that Trillanes explained his choice of the Manila Peninsula as a matter of convenience. Apparently, the plan was to go to Ninoy Aquino's monument after he walked out from his very own treason trial (while the security gaped stupidly--I would have shot him or done some kung-fu. These police people should watch more cable), but because it was RAINING, he and and his entourage decided to swing by the Manila Pen for some coffee and French pastries in between exhorting their fellow Filipinos to change the world.

Can they be any more ridiculous, I ask you? Yeah, thought so. It boggled the mind the first time he pulled off a stunt like this, back in 2003, when he also masterminded a coup in Oakwood (as if you could eject the president of the country by holding a 5-star hotel hostage). Friends think that he would have been more effectively heard if he had chosen a more er public pulpit, but I suspect that Trillanes takes a perverse delight in declaring a mass revolution in the bosom of high-society Manila. A slap in the face of privilege, one might say. The problem with this reasoning is that he and his supporters are not exactly being subtle about wallowing in their burgis pretensions. Or else Trillanes is all too (sadly) conscious of his own delusions, since to his mind, he is already savior, president, Great Leader of the country. Nakakahiya talaga.

After government troops rammed a freaking tank into the glass doors of the Manila Pen lobby (see video taken by a SOLDIER, link c/o kytha -- how did he manage to find the time to play with his digicam while he was supposedly in the middle of disarming insurgents?), Trillanes agreed to surrender because he did not want Teh People to suffer bloodshed. Er, what? They were aiming the guns at your insufferably smug face, you nitwit. Furthermore, I don't see how he could have expected a different outcome. Did he seriously think that once he took over a hotel the government would crawl on its knees and beg him for forgiveness or something? "Oh, we're so sorry we accused you of treason. Also, we hope that you will understand that the reason why we did not immediately allow you to assume your senatorial office (haha! yes) was because you said that the first thing you would do once elected is to bring the government down. And you have proven us right! We are humbled."

Thankfully Filipinos seem to be genetically wired with some sort of, well, whatever mechanism it is that prevents us from collective immolation. We have messianic cults liek whoa but we're just too ridiculous for the actual apocalypse. There is definitely a missing link in this equation. You have people who want to save the world, the only problem is badly driven tanks, congested traffic, corny politicians, and rain get in the way. Revolutions end up with merienda in a hotel lobby.

Housebound

I was supposed to report to the office today but decided to stay in my apartment due to increasingly hysterical weather reports over the radio about the onslaught of typhoon Mina which is due to make landfall some time this evening or tomorrow morning. Or afternoon. The typhoon's movement seems to be pretty unpredictable. It's currently hovering over half the entire archipelago, pretty as you please.

Filipinos are glued to TV sets and news websites. Never thought that the day will come when this all too obsessive country will find its latest obsession in  satellite images but I for one have been continuously refreshing Inquirer.net's website to view the face of our destiny. At least for the next couple of days.

That is one mother--freaking typhoon.

Speaking of mothers, mine has been ordering me to go home to the province and sit this one out with the family.  I've got tons of work to do, however, and not much time to do it. To be honest I'm a little twitchy though it doesn't look like Mina will be directly affecting Manila. It's actually pretty calm outside my window, the sky miraculously light. If I hadn't seen this picture, I  might have been fooled into rhapsodizing about November dusks, with a quote or two by Pushkin for good measure. As it is, the stillness is rather nerve-racking. People are eyeing the horizon warily while Mina dawdles somewhere in Aurora and just. keeps. getting. bigger.

The northeastern regions will bear the brunt of the typhoon. Already nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated in Bicol and Catanduanes. Manila will most likely experience its share of heavy rains and thunderstorms, which are nothing new to urbanites, but the last time we heard the words Super and Typhoon together, billboards were falling all over the place, electric poles were flying, and people were drowning in highways. 

Which reminds me. I should probably make a quick dash to the supermarket and stock up on candles and food. I ought to have done this earlier but I was absorbed with work. And I think I do have a lingering phobia re: Milenyo. I fell asleep to the patter of rain and woke up to the sound of  a TV antenna slamming into my window. Who knows what might happen the minute I step outside this apartment?

On the other hand: sardine sandwiches. I'm outta here.

Untitled

My grandmother passed away on November 17, 2007 at 9:03 AM. I still managed to see her on the night before her death. I'm thankful to the ICU admin staff who let me in despite the fact that I arrived hours after the visiting schedule. My brother was not so lucky. He came straight from field work at dawn but by then the staff had changed and the new nurses wouldn't let him enter despite his repeated pleading. He said that he was afraid he would never see our grandmother alive again, and he was right.

As for me -- Lola was awake when I saw her last. She stared at me throughout my visit, her gaze surprisingly clear-eyed and direct. I didn't want to read into this more than I should, I didn't know if she recognized me during those final hours -- I was only grateful that all traces of pain had left her eyes and that she was still somehow aware of my presence. I read that one's sense of hearing is the last to go, so even though she might not have been able to understand my words anymore, I told her that I loved her more than anything. And I finally said goodbye.

I'd spoken to my aunt before I went up to the ICU and she told me that she and my father had already signed a waiver to the effect that should my grandmother's vital signs start to fail, the doctors would not attempt to revive her through 'intrusive' means. Her head physician had suggested it. She was no longer responding to medication, her arms and legs were painfully swollen because her internal organs could not process anything, and she was unconscious most of the time.

When my grandfather died, we were all afraid that my grandmother would sink into depression and fall ill. It's the stuff of melodramas, but seeing how close they were, and how much they depended on each other, we felt that our fears weren't exaggerated. Plus we'd heard enough stories about couples who'd been together a long time dying one after the other because they couldn't survive separately. I didn't see any way to raise the issue diplomatically so rather than wait for my grandmother to exhibit the fateful symptoms of lovelorn melancholia, I decided to talk to her straight out.

"Lola," I said. "I know that you really loved Lolo, but I hope that you're not entertaining any dramatic ideas about following him to the grave or something like that so soon. It's kind of... You might as well shoot me in the head first if you do plan to pine away so I won't have to see it."

My grandmother gave me a disbelieving look. "You can shoot yourself if you want. I'm not pining. I'm not dying. I plan to live."

And that was that.

What remained unspoken was that the reason why she wanted to live on was because of her grandchildren. Our parents knew it, all our relatives knew it, we knew it. She loved us that much. There were only six of us, and we were all she ever talked about. She was very lonely after Lolo died and we were all embarking on careers, separate lives, so she did not see us as much she would have liked. She had a lot of people around her--nieces and nephews who cared for her and visited her in her house--but in the end we were the only ones whose faces she wanted to see, the only ones whom she wanted to talk to. Whenever I would come home, I would almost always see her standing by the gate, watching the passing tricycles and jeepneys, waiting. As soon as she saw me getting down from the tricycle her face would light up, and by the time I approached her, she would be on the verge of tears. "Ay, ineng," she would say, reaching out to embrace me. "I have been praying that I would see you. I am so thankful that you are here."

To the very last she remembered us. When in pain she would call our names. She would jolt awake from a drug-induced haze to clasp our hands and pull us towards her.

I know that my grandmother wanted to live. I know she tried so hard, not for herself, but because she did not want to be parted from us. "Ayaw niyang mawalay sa inyo," our relatives murmured last night as they recounted yet again how she lived after Lolo died--how she would visit their houses during small family occasions and then request for food to bring home so she could share it with us lest we arrive (accidentally, by a miracle of God), how she never stopped talking about us--everything from our grandest gestures to our smallest accomplishments.

We were not spoiled, but we were profoundly loved, that sort of special, unconditional love that seemed to exist only between grandparents and grandchildren, and my attachment to my grandmother and hers to me was particularly deep. I was the first grandchild, and from the minute I was born, as she liked to say, she had taken me into her heart. That's where I've been living ever since, in a way. And now that she's gone, I feel homeless.

Our parents are now completely orphaned but we, her grandchildren, have been set adrift. There are so many things about her that we would miss. We didn't want to be parted from her any more than she wanted to be without us. That's why she hung on for as long as she did, that's why when my aunt told me about their decision, my first instinct was to hunt the doctor down and tear that waiver into pieces.

"We've all tried our best," my aunt said simply. "Your grandmother is so tired, but you know she isn't one to let go of you first. I'll leave it to you to talk to your cousins."

So I called my cousins and they told me what they wanted to say to her, in case they could not say it themselves on time.

To be honest, I don't know if she heard us. I don't know if she was waiting for us to to actually do it. This might be poetic conceit speaking, more melodrama. But I think I managed to say what we felt we had to say, trusting in that connection between us before she herself cut it loose.

It was a peaceful death. There were no seizures, no cardiac arrests, no nightmarish struggles for breath. According to the ICU staff, her pulse slowed gradually, her blood pressure dropped--like a flower falling to earth, as one rather carried away nurse put it. It didn't fluctuate hysterically as it did for the past few weeks. A calm and graceful decline--the sort of trajectory my terminally fastidious and poised grandmother would have charted--until finally it was over.

My aunt never made it. The doctors met her on her way to the ICU and broke the news. She spent thirty minutes at her mother's bedside before she told us, one by one. I managed to see my grandmother's body before they took her away. It was hard, looking upon her face, but in the end, there was really nothing left to say. All you could do was look, and remember.

Thank you to everyone who expressed their condolences and support. Thank you for taking the time to read my entries. Thank you.

Goodbyes

Grandmother was discharged last Monday from the hospital for recovery at home but she had to be rushed back again because of liver and respiratory problems. She's in the ICU right now. Her arms and legs are swollen with fluids -- weeks worth of medication which she could no longer expel or process on her own, according to the doctors. She also has aspiration pneumonia, again. We're not sure if the liver problem is a side-effect of a medication she's taking for a lung ailment but tests show that her sodium, potassium, albumin etc levels are alarmingly low. Plus her blood pressure just keeps dropping. They're trying to raise it back up through yet more medication, which contributes to her continued bloating.

I think that even if she does beat pneumonia, sooner or later, something will get her. Liver's failing, kidney's failing. Heart is still thankfully functional but how long will that last? After she fractured her hip, everything else started going wrong. From being a sturdy, loquacious and stubbornly independent old lady, Lola has become a frail and vacant-eyed shadow. When she was first taken to the hospital for her hip replacement operation, she still had the strength of mind to smile at me. I remember standing in front of the ER, watching the van pull up, and my cousin Lloyd lifting Lola with the help of nursing assistants from the van to a wheelchair. She kept flinching all throughout. When at last she was sitting in the wheelchair, I noticed that she was barefoot so I looked for her sandals. They were mismatched. I knelt to put them on her feet and couldn't stop crying. But she smiled and called me by name.

Now, of course, she can't even talk. I stayed with her throughout the previous week and she could still recognize us. Before I left last Saturday she touched my hair and pulled me down to embrace me and patted me on the shoulder as if between the two of us it was I who needed comforting. During ever rarer moments of lucidity, she would hold my hand and frown because it was too hot for her sensitized nerves. Perhaps I had a fever? I should rest. I should see a doctor. These were familiar words, familiar actions, the bedrock of a relationship which has been my center of gravity ever since childhood.

When I slip in to see her in the ICU I hunt obsessively for signs, hints, for some certainty that my grandmother could recognize not so much our names, or our faces, but the feel of our hands, the kiss on her cheek and forehead. My grandmother has always been an affectionate person, especially with her grandchildren; she depended on the physicality of gestures to carry a message. My message is love, and also, goodbye. But I'm afraid that what I'm really telling her is, please hold on. Please don't leave.

Am I so selfish? She's very old. And I think that I've been preparing for this moment since I was eight and realized that one day I would lose my grandmother. I sat up in bed instantly and asked God to take her away if he must when I was older, maybe in twenty years or so, because then it would be more bearable. A selfish child, yes, who now comes to the also blinding realization that it is not bearable, after all. Thirty, forty, one hundred years down the line, it would never be bearable.

My sister and I talked earlier and she told me that she had so many regrets about Lola, that, for some reason, losing our grandmother like this was more painful than losing our grandfather. Lolo, at least, wanted to go and in his own fashion he left on his terms. When he died, we all felt that we should have done this, done that, but then we still had our grandmother. "I told myself, Lola, you will be the most precious thing in the world to me," said Bai. "But there were times when instead of treasuring her, I put her away for safekeeping, but then would forget."

I forgot too, countless of times. I stayed in Manila, didn't call as often as I should, didn't say I loved her always and always. Always.