Two weeks ago, I got a text message from my youngest brother Mading. Inang, our 101-year-old mother, had been rushed to a hospital in Pampanga at past midnight. She had difficulty breathing. Her face had turned pale.
Preliminary examination at the emergency room, however, showed her vital signs were normal. She was confined while awaiting a medical specialist to look into her condition. I asked Mading to update me of the result and to advise if I must go to Inang’s bedside. His return text: three of our four sisters and three other brothers had already come to the hospital. At once my wife and I decided to join them.
As we motored to Pampanga, I received the doctor’s diagnosis. Inang had incipient pneumonia, with an indication of tuberculosis. A sample of her sputum was taken for lab verification. Quite concerned, I texted back:
“Read this message to Inang (in Kapampangan): ‘You can overcome your affliction, Inang. We, your children, have full confidence in your capability to prevail and in your heart’s vitality. We rely on your courage and strength. And be assured we love you very much!’”
What a pleasant surprise we got when we reached the hospital by noon. We found Inang being spoonfed with soup by Raf, the grandson who had brought her to the hospital. She took the soup with gusto. A group of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, crowded in the small room, cheered her on. Several others huddled in the corridor, all wishing that the emergency would end well for Inang.
In the next hour, our mother talked animatedly, on and on, her voice loud and clear, as I lightly massaged her temples and caressed her silky hair, still with just a few strands of white. Her mood shifted from cheerful to somber, then back to cheerfulness, even bantering with her apo.
Eyes glistening, she recalled how our family, 12 children in all, had been nourished with the produce of the land we all tended together as farm tenants — rice and corn, tubers, peanuts, mongo, tomatoes, and all the green and yellow vegetables and fruits; plus the fishes from the rice fields and the creek, and the eggs and meat from our own chickens.
And yes, the frogs. Inang reveled at how, under the hot mid-afternoon sun, she would coax the tugak to bite the worm at the end of the string tied to a long pole (padwas) that she would then lift quickly with one hand, dropping the surprised frog into the deep cloth bag in her other hand.
Then turning somber, as though bidding goodbye, Inang dispensed two pieces of advice:
1) Love and care for one another, keep our large brood united — 189 of us now, three generations and counting — and never allow any differences, big or small, to divide us; and
2) Always remember there is a God, she said. “Make sure you pray, wherever you may be. You need not go to church to hear mass. Just pray!”
I fully understand and deeply appreciate Inang’s second advice. It was never her practice to go to church to pray or hear mass, and she didn’t require us to do so. But up till I graduated from high school (after which I moved to the big city), she would gather us in the living room after supper to pray together. This, I believe, helped strengthen our family ties.
Beyond that she allowed us to live by our religious beliefs in our chosen ways. And she never discussed religion with us.
My siblings and I left the hospital somewhat assured that Inang would pull through. When I checked with Mading that evening he reported that, indeed, she was still in good spirits, eating her hospital dinner well, and readily falling asleep.
The next day, Inang was further buoyed by the visit of our eldest brother Jess. She wanted to be taken back home, saying she had fully recovered. Grudgingly she agreed to wait for the doctor’s clearance.
True enough, on the third day the doctor gave her a clean bill of health. The threatened pneumonia had disappeared. The TB test proved negative.
Mading texted: “Inang is back in Dampul. She is merrily relating what happened to her, with none of her usual critical comments. She’s happy over how the doctors and nurses fussed over her, because she was their first centenarian patient.”
For a while I worried that our mother had really gotten seriously ill. In my last two visits to her, she had been complaining of debility, of pains here and there, of her eyesight and hearing both failing. My sister Herming, who mainly takes care of her, worried that Inang — unusually for her — had been moping for much of the previous days, hunched over in her rocking chair.
But the episode at the hospital showed that Inang was quick to rebound from what truly ailed her — the intense longing to see and talk more often with her children, especially those who aren’t always there.
Hence, I have resolved to visit Inang more frequently, to help her live much longer and happier.
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Email: satur.ocampo@gmail.com