My family need not remember or reflect upon our past mistakes this recent Lenten season because already our pain is too much and we bear it patiently.
My uncle died last Friday, after the operation to remove his gallstones and gallbladder (cholecystectomy). He had been diagnosed with Colon cancer three years ago and underwent resection of parts of his colon, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. He was fine after the treatments until Wednesday when he complained of excruciating abdominal pain.
After the necessary laboratory and diagnostic exams, he underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy (in which 3 portholes will be made on the abdomen for the camera, probes, and instruments for removal of the gallbladder and gallstones). But the procedure had to be converted to an exploratory laparotomy (midline incision on the abdomen to access the organs underneath) because the surgeons noted an obstruction at the level of the small intestines. After opening, it was found that his intestines had ruptured due to the increased intraluminal pressure brought about by an obstruction in the lumen of the intestines. They were even able to recover undigested pieces of his last food intake, which was sliced pieces of singkamas. Intestinal contents had spilled into the abdominal cavity and surgeons spent long hours cleaning it up and repairing the intestines. However, a systemic infection had already begun (sepsis). Postoperatively, he had to stay in the ICU because of cerebral edema and congestive heart failure. After a few hours, though, he had a cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated. He was pronounced dead early morning of Good Friday.
He was 74 years old. And we thought he had won the battle against cancer, only to succumb to gut obstruction and sepsis.
My uncle and my aunt live on their own in their house, with only a maid and a driver, which neither stay in. My aunt took care of most of the household chores and was also responsible for taking care of my uncle. I know how these two responsibilities had taken much of my aunt’s energy, time, and life, because I have lived with them while I was in my internship year. From carefully planning and monitoring his diet and food intake to fixing and cleaning his colostomy bag, she’s way better than a hired private nurse. She’s patient with his eccentricities and his stubbornness to eat more food than what he’s allowed to. She’s his counselor as she motivated him to move about, exercise and spend more of his time outside than inside the house. They argued and got impatient with each other a lot, which they did for several years. It cemented the bonds between them, nevertheless.
So it hurt to see my aunt, alone, for the first time, feeling an emptiness she had not known before. On the ICU bed, she saw lying the man she had spent most of her lifetime with, an empty husk, face unrecognizable, being ridden with pain and disease. But her man still.
My other aunt told us of how she hugged my uncle’s bed at home when they went back to get clothes for him for his burial. I cannot imagine the pain she must have felt when she touched the barong tagalog, the pants, and the shoes, which are all brand-new and which she could have been saving to be worn in their wedding anniversary or some special occasion. The icy could-haves bit through skin to plunge into the heart.
She would have stayed by his coffin all throughout the wake, if not perhaps the firm request of her children to stay home with them and rest. I noted she had only looked at him once, in his bronze coffin and polished glass, and did not look again.
In her quiet suffering, I came to adore this woman more. If there is the kind of love that we should all aspire to give and to receive, it is her love for my uncle. Despite all the pain and sufferings of his passing and being left alone, it would still be worth it because she had dared to love and stood by that love despite the odds. Despite the very possibility that he would be leaving her for good someday.
Most people nowadays fear to love too much for many reasons. Some fear they’ll give too much without getting anything in return. Some fear that they cannot give love as much as they have received. Some fear that the investment might not be worth it. Some choose not to love because they feel they aren’t going to be loved for the reasons they want to be loved.
But these fears must be overcome in order to live.
Life is just a long passage, with birth at the entrance and death at the exit. There are no side exits that lead to somewhere else but death. There may be side doors, rooms, or lounges where one can linger. But Time does not allow for much lingering. Always we have to move forward. And it is this forward-movement only rule of the passage of life that is the reason we should live each moment to the fullest possibility.
In life, I believe that the fullest possibilities can be achieved by doing two things: loving and learning. One without the other cannot result to a full life, though, as this will result only to half-baked expectations that could only be good as trash to be thrown away at the exit door, forgotten, leaving only a sense of betrayed and unappreciated efforts.
And so, in our lives, we must love and learn.
I believe my aunt and uncle did both things superbly. Only uncle has to leave the passageway first.
And so it was said that the parting wasn’t painful to the one who left, but rather to the ones who’re still left in the passage.
But this pain is the good kind, I think. It only reminds us that the person who left had shared our passageway once and that he had loved and learned. He had lived.
