My mother’s Death Certificate indicated that she died of cardio-respiratory arrest “probably” secondary to cerebral hemorrhage at 11:50 a.m., less than one hour after the car accident and fifteen minutes in the hospital. I read the Motor Vehicle Accident Report signed by P/Sgt Rosellier Canoy, INP Station Commander. The police report showed that the accident happened on the national highway at 11:00 a.m. on October 29, 1990. Cesar Remolado, 30 years old and with ten years driving experience, drove the Toyota Jitney. No case was filed against the driver. Our father agreed to the offer of indemnity for death by the vehicle’s owner. It was a measly sum. The owner, Noel Enriquez, was a friend of the family.
My parents had a vegetable garden in the residential lot in the adjoining barangay of Sigapod. They were on their way on foot when my mother remembered something and went back to the house. She was already in the middle of the road but she turned back due to an incoming bus, only to be hit by the jitney traveling from the opposite direction. Neighbors stopped a passenger jeep. Efren and the daughters of Nang Tikay (Vilma and Angging) accompanied our father to Kolambugan. Our father carried our mother in his arms throughout the trip.
For many years, my mother had been hiking on that highway. She trudged on the gravel, then later, concrete road for countless of hours. Yet on that portentous morning, perhaps in a daze, she failed to anticipate the incoming vehicle as she crossed the road.
My father died five months later, unable to cope with the pain and emptiness that our mother’s death left in his heart.
With the death of my mother, my father practically lived alone in the old house since my brother Efren was always out with his buddies. He shuttled daily to his residential lot at Sigapud, mainly for his new-found pastime – gardening. Bebe Dumapias, a temporary lodger at the makeshift house, was talking to my father as she washed the dishes. Wondering at his abrupt silence, she sought out my father outside. She was shocked at the sight of my father lying unconscious on the ground. He was weeding the patch of vegetable garden in the yard when it happened. The stroke jerked him and he toppled on the ground. It was past nine o’clock in the morning. Neighbors came when they heard Bebe’s cries for help. They brought my father to the emergency hospital in Kolambugan. In the afternoon, the ambulance brought the inert patient to Iligan City.
My father was in coma for three days at Dr. Uy Hospital. The doctor’s prognosis dashed my hope for his recovery. The most that remedial life support can do was to prolong his vegetative state. After the agony of self-denial, I realized that the most loving thing to do was to pray for his peaceful passage to the next world, consoled that my father has lived a full life and soon be reunited with my mother. I was present when he gave up the ghost on the dawn of April 7, 1991. April 7 was the my mother’s birthday. With my mouth pressed on his ear, I prayed with him after we sang “God Is My Refuge” and “Lord Jesus We Enthrone You.” I was sure he heard the singing and the praying, since I saw, or thought I saw, a very mild movement of muscles around his eyes although no tears came out. I also noticed that his receding pulse would return when my sister Trudes, sobbing, entreated him not to give up. I sensed that he clang to dear life waiting for his youngest child to arrive. He died peacefully after reassuring him that all his children were around and that he should not worry since we could take care of ourselves. We (Ediltrudes, Isidro, Efren, Rufino and myself) had to lie to him that Leo was not around. Because of marital problem, he fled to Camarines Sur after the burial of our mother
Seventeen years had passed since I last saw my father. I clawed at the dregs of my memory but my mind, akin to a clogged computer that needed to be defragged, took time to boot. I surfed the memory lane to get an authentic vision of him. I wanted to freeze him frame by frame like focusing a camera and telling him to smile. Yes, my father smiled a lot, in fact he smiled all the time except when Bonifacio died, then Concepcion, then Silvestre and then mother. I remembered his only picture as a young man posing with his father and mother. With his hair neatly combed and plastered with pomade, he was grinning, baring his upper front teeth. Then there was a picture of him with my mother, taken in 1957. His smile was all over his lean face. He had a small pointed nose and well-defined eyebrows. He looked very neat and quite handsome. Beside him in the half-body black and white photo was my mother with a newly curled lock of hair perching on her round face. Her smile was subdued compared to my father. Her puffy coiffure, a long lost vogue, was a reminiscence of the 60s. I moved the frames of memory forward and backyard and all the time I was greeted with my father’s perpetual smiles. I missed my father, and my mother.
I yearned for my dead parents just as they yearned for me alive. I saw their yearnings every time I came to visit them, which were far in between. My mother would beg me to stay for a day or a night but I would procrastinate and leave anyway. There was still plenty of time for them, I would reason out to myself. I was wrong. Time was short, particularly for my parents. How I wish they were still alive to see their great grandchildren.
