Towards The End

One night while looking around in National Bookstore, my cellphone rung. I answered it. It was Mom. I was surprised to hear her crying. It's about my grandfather who has just undergone an operation in his liver. I understood since Mom really is a naturally touchy and sensitive person. She cries easily especially over grave and personal topics. At first I simply thought that Mom was just worried about PapaTony but I never knew the news she would bring was more than alarming.

PapaTony has liver cancer.

I knew all along Patony was a very sickly person since he first stepped into old age but I never expected this! But after all, he already is 75 years old and he's been surgically operated many times now. The last time I visited him he was throughly bed-ridden. He couldn't move. Maybe his time has almost come. Death is inevtible but unwritten in the scrolls of human life.

Patony himself doesn't know he has cancer but Mom and my other aunts and uncles already know. Even Tito Mike from Canada has been informed. They fear that if Patony finds out he has cancer, he'll lose all will to live and just choose death over suffering. Mom and I understand that Patony is old and is near the end but at least, just at least, he must not die in pain. He deserves to die peacefully. And we should all be thankful that he managed to live past 70 years and that he and Mamalud were gifted to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary. Only a very few live to experience such a gift.

I feel somewhat teary-eyed as I write this. Sure Patony was somewhat a chronic self-righteous and financially adviser and a very strict disciplinarian but he was very generous to all of us. He's a good man, an industrious insurance agent, a "crap son of a bitch" according to Mamalud, and a very loving grandfather. Of course we'll all miss him. From the way I write this, it's as if he really is going to pass soon. I'm not rushing his death. I just feel like his time is coming soon. Very soon. Old age, cancer, several operations... Those are enough to prophecize the end...

"After five years, college narin ako! Yay!" said my little sister Pauline as she looked out the terrace with a look of hopeful happiness.

"Five years..." Mamalud, my grandmother, said to herself quietly. "Will I still be around five years from now?"

"Bakit Mamalud? Saan ka pupunta after five years?" Pauline asked naively.

Before Mamalud could answer, I quickly interrupted. "Malayo. Sa malayo pupunta si Mamalud."

"Malayo? Saang malayo?" Pauline asked again.

"Basta malayo..." I ended the conversation.

A place of no return... When will it be my time to go there...?