Moving on

We buried our father Frank on a Sunday, and the Tuesday right after, I went back to work full time. My sister Mae, a new immigrant to the US, flew back to Los Angeles the Friday after. Exactly a week after Dad was laid to rest at the Manila Memorial Park, my other sister Geraldine, a psychiatrist, flew back to her home in Philadelphia. My youngest sister Val, who runs a business, never quite took a break.

One by one, we are now all settling back into our own grooves, like the grooves made by gentle waves on the sand. Dad’s death, though not sudden, splashed waves on our grooves, blurring the lines, unsettling us. Now we are finding our way back. Even our mom Sonia is busying herself with the tons of paperwork that await a widow. I remember when we were still in Anaheim the day after Dad’s death — Mom did the laundry.

It has not been easy, even if we had 10 months to prepare. Some people even say a sudden death in the family is easier, because you bear the anxiety for a lesser period, you don’t go through the roller coaster of hopes and disappointments. Regardless, death of a loved one is heart-wrenching, whether you’re ready or not.

Exactly a year ago, I had gone on a retreat in Caleruega with my Assumption high school batch mates and I was thanking God that, despite the trials of everyday life and living, I did not have the pain of having a loved one who was sick.

Then, bang! In the first week of September last year, less than a month after my retreat, I tripped in a freak accident and my left ankle was fractured. At the very same time, news from our parents in the US hit us like a tsunami: Dad’s tests showed he had a tumor in his pancreas. At the time, actor Patrick Swayze had just died from cancer of the pancreas. The doctors, even friends of ours who are doctors, didn’t mince words: with few exceptions, pancreatic cancer takes no prisoners.

Still, we had an abundance of hope and Dad himself sought the most aggressive cure, including life-threatening Whipple surgery. In October, just after the cast on my left foot was taken out, I joined my sisters at the University of Southern California in LA for Dad’s surgery. Two hours into the surgery, the doctor emerged from the OR and motioned my mother to a private room in the waiting lounge. When my sisters and I followed, the tension in the room was so thick you could have run a scalpel through it. The surgeon said he was closing Dad up because the cancer had spread to his liver and the Whipple would do him no good.

It was a death sentence. No ifs and buts about it. Looking back, I can say that the moment was the moment the boom was lowered on our relatively happy, normal lives. Dad had three weeks, three months, six months, two years at the most. Mom begged the doctor to do something so she and Dad could still make their golden year together as husband and wife. The doctor wasn’t cold, just detached. There was nothing he could do, he repeated.

My mom, who, through the 10 months of Dad’s illness, remained almost unrealistically hopeful (some thought she was in denial), told us recently that she had accepted Dad’s fate on that heart-rending October morn at the USC.

I also believe that that moment at the USC was the most painful episode in our journey since September, because the reality of Dad’s dying was told to our face. We all know we are going to die, sooner or later. But no one tells it to us in specifics. On that day at USC, death was no longer a stranger. He was knocking on the door of our Dad’s body, and the sound was deafening.

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Why do I write this now? Because grief is a road that I have now traveled, and I want to share my journey with those who are at present wobbling on this road, struggling to stay the course. After surgery, Dad had a very painful recovery. The pain from the tumor started to claim him. One of the best procedures he underwent was a Celiac Block, which effectively rendered him pain free for six months. Later, the chemo would also shrink his tumor in the pancreas, so the pain Dad felt in his dying days was not excruciating. In fact, that is why he never gave up on life — he was not in great pain. His suffering came from the side-effects of his treatment, which to someone as strong willed as my Dad, was peanuts.

We don’t have many regrets, because we rallied around Dad and respected his decisions. A friend, Dr. Alex Ayco, at the very start, advised me that if the family acts as one, “kung buo lagi kayo,” everyone will have an easier time.

In Dad’s case, he wanted to fight. He really wanted to take the blows because he wanted to live — a week longer, a month longer, a year longer. So we gave him the tools to help him fight, even if the tools were sometimes just a kiss and an encouraging embrace.

We made our interest in Dad’s recovery very evident to his doctors. It would not be rare for all six of us to be in the doctor’s office at one time even if Dad was the only patient. Also, you will realize after your loved one has passed away that the time you spent with him was never enough. When Dad was sick, friends and relatives who had experienced the death of a loved one, especially to cancer, urged me to spend as much time with him as possible, saying some things could be put on hold or delegated to others, but not the caring for someone whose days are numbered. We should gift our loved ones with our time whether they are sick or not, but it becomes more urgent when you know they could be gone tomorrow. And when you look back, you will realize that every single bit of sacrifice you made in the name of making this person know he is loved, is worth it.

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Saying goodbye to Dad on his deathbed was like a hole was being carved out of my chest. He passed on six hours before I reached his bedside. Then seeing his name on a signboard on the foyer of the mortuary in Anaheim, where he first lay repose, was a jolt, like speeding train had just missed me by a hairline. I had seen Dad’s name on nameplates outside his office or his hospital room, but on a signboard announcing in what hall his wake was? Dad, dead? It was surreal.

Sometimes I wonder why I, a middle-aged career woman with a grown-up son, can still be so affected by the death of a parent.

Philip Thompson, one of the many kind people who condoled with me after Dad’s death, put it so succinctly when he wrote, “I suppose there’s a very simple reason why none of us can fully comprehend or envision a world without our parents in it, and that is because, for each one of us, that world has simply never existed — since they have been in our lives since the moment we came into this world.” 

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Here are some tips for the grieving which I picked up from a pamphlet entitled, “Giving Yourself Permission to Grieve.”

The author Carol Luebering writes that even if you “slam the door against your grief,” it will “appear at the window.” In other words, you have to face grief. “And, like a shattered bone, a shattered heart needs two things before healing can happen: proper attention and sufficient time. In the meantime, it’s going to hurt — a lot.”

I had a broken bone last year, and she’s right. Broken bones, broken hearts take time to heal.

Luebering says there is no “detour around the pain.” As I said, it is a road you must travel. Healing is a journey you must take. She even suggests that you “befriend grief.”

Facing the pain, reiterates Luebering, “allows you to work through it, to admit to yourself how deeply your loss runs. Only then can you gradually ease your grief on the past and face the life ahead of with restored energy and yes, happiness.”

“Keep praying,” she urges, “even when it is hard.”

Grief, she says is like a long, dark tunnel. To see the light at the end of the tunnel, you must move on. Yes, you must first move on.

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