Missing Jimmy

I sent out pained communication past 3 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 30. It was posted to several friends — Jimmy Abad, Marj Evasco, Juaniyo Arcellana, Mike Marasigan, Albert Gamboa and Patricia Evangelista among them — who knew the subject and whom I knew would feel my loss.

Previous to the personal crisis, the year had started out badly, but no need to share the gory details of what seemed like an unending spate of bad luck. Then this:  

I just lost my trusted driver Jimmy, for good. Darn this bitch of a January. He passed away a few hours ago, nearing midnight, in a Batangas hospital where his wife had taken him yesterday, before she reported to me by text that the doc had said he was 50/50.

Earlier at noon, she had texted an SOS for help, as Jimmy was really feeling delikado na daw. I conferred with his brother here in Manila, also by text, and we agreed there was nothing we could do to physically help. I texted Melissa back to take her husband to the hospital herself, and I’d see to the cost, but they shouldn’t expect or wait for us to make that three-hour drive. 

It was pneumonia, she said, a severe case of it apparently, and one that led to quick deterioration. I thought it was TB when I told him to go home and rest and have himself healed, exactly a week ago. 

His brothers said that he had been that sick before, but managed to recover. That was years ago. I think that was why he had to leave us for several months then, to recuperate in the boondocks of Capiz, before coming back to serve our family for another six years. They said it was due to excessive drinking on weekends when he went home. 

It was all so swift. I had noticed him coughing a lot about two weeks ago, or early in January. In hindsight, his bros say it might have been because of the long weekend breaks I allowed him for Christmas and New Year, when he must have turned to much drink again.

In any case, he kept coughing so badly that I gave him a bottle of Lagundi. Then I added Bisolvon for him to take home that weekend, to break up all that phlegm. When he returned the following Monday, he said he had finished it, but he was still coughing sporadically. 

I thought nothing of it, being used to smoker’s cough myself. But it seemed to be getting worse with him, especially at night as he lay asleep. He would cough and keep waking up. Then last Thursday he was coughing non-stop as he drove me to Makati for a meeting. When I asked him how he was, he said his chest seemed to be tightening. I got alarmed as I thought he might have a heart attack, so when we got down from the long flyover to Buendia, I told him to pull over and I’d take over the wheel the rest of the way to Shangri-La hotel. 

He refused. Kaya daw niya. True enough, by the time I got down, he seemed to have recovered. And when he picked me up after a couple of hours, he wasn’t coughing violently anymore. Closer to home, it started up again, but not as badly as that first fit. That night, it was the usual. It seemed to get worse when he lay down to sleep. 

Friday afternoon, when he told me he felt so fatigued after “just” watering the plants, I told him that was it; he should have himself checked. The village administrator made arrangements with our barangay clinic. He came back after 90 minutes, and said he was told to wait but still failed to see the doctor. Later that night, as I was still working, I asked someone who came by to drop him off at a Pasig hospital, either public or semi-private. He came back after two hours to say he had just been told him to come back Monday. 

I said he couldn’t wait that long. I suggested he go to his brother in Parañaque and discuss it, but to get an X-ray ASAP so we could determine if it was TB, as I was almost sure it was. I was getting concerned over the kids whom he usually drove to school and back.

Pero matigas ang ulo at ma-debate talagang kausap. Ayaw pumunta sa kapatid kasi nasira daw niya yung tapalodo ng motorsiklong hiniram lang niya “kay utol” — and which he uses to get home to Batangas every weekend. Uuwi na lang daw siya ng maaga the next day. Kaya daw niyang mag-motor all the way to Malvar, Batangas. 

Sige kako, pero maaga ka umalis, kung kaya mo talaga. Para may buong hapon ka pang magpatingin. At malamang magpapahinga ka ng six months habang nagpapagamot. 

I woke past 10 a.m. Saturday to see him still fixing up all the things he wanted to strap into his motorbike. Worse, he couldn’t go home yet daw, as someone had told him of a hospital nearby that could check and X-ray him. I had given him an advance the previous night, but I said if he had to wait for all that here in Pasig, anong oras ka pa makakauwi? Baka di ka na makaabot, sa kondisyon mo. Bakit di ka na lang dun patingin?

Even the cleaning lady who comes on Saturdays and the guard in the guard box nearby tried to talk him out of his plan to motor all the way back late that day. Like me, they tried to convince him to leave his bike, and just take public transport. Matigas talagang ulo. He wheeled off nearing noon, but I was sure he’d still stick to his plan of getting an X-ray here in Pasig before going home.    

I texted his brother to make sumbong. Sometime in the evening we both texted Jimmy to ask if he had reached home na. It turned out to be an epic drive; he reached Malvar well past midnight. His brothers drove to Batangas the next day to check him out. He had gotten a doctor’s prescription and medicine for a week as he was told. He didn’t say it was pneumonia, so on Monday I collected the kids early and we all had X-rays. Thankfully, we were all cleared.

Wednesday I texted to ask how he was. He voice-called back, and tried to tell me his medical story in his now halting speech. I told him to stop, told him off and said kung hirap kang mag-text, eh di ang asawa mo. Ganun na nga. Only then did I learn that the doctor he saw diagnosed his case as pneumonia. That was Wednesday. I thought pneumonia would be easier to cure than TB, or at least take a briefer time. 

Now this, yesterday: his wife’s SOS text at noon. And finally, as I feared might happen with every succeeding SMS I got, the sad news from his bro at 1:30 a.m. — that Jimmy had expired, barely a week after I last saw him and sent him home.

Now I can’t sleep, despite fatigue from work. Jim had been with me for seven-eight years, through thick and thin, and been extremely loyal. He’d given me fits, to the point where I’d complain that we were almost like a married couple, always wrangling — because of my complaints over his ka-engotan and the way he’d tend to argue over everything. 

Now of course I’ll miss him; the kids will miss him, especially Aric. And I begin the serial grief in these wee hours, over whisky and countless cigarettes. Farewell, Jimmy. Now I’ve got your teen-aged son in Mambusao to help finish high school, and your second wife and three little girls, the youngest barely three weeks old, to goddamn help. 

Sod January 2010!

On Wednesday, February 3, son Aric and I and the new driver — a cousin of Jimmy whom he recommended as a sub — motored early to Malvar to catch the burial rites. The 17-year-old son Jepoy, who had been sent back to Mambusao for high school, was there with a tiyahin, along with a score of relatives that once again showed the strength of kinship in our country.

Prayers were said, photos taken of everyone around the casket. And the welter of kasabihan or beliefs — read: superstition — made manifest, such as having the three young daughters swung over the casket and back, just before interment.

Some of his kin addressed Jimmy directly, appealing to him to go in peace, and from the afterlife still seek to help everyone dear that he was leaving behind. We threw flowers to join him in his niche.

I spoke with Jepoy, assuring him of tuition needs so he could finish high school, as long as he was determined to do so. He said he would, because he wanted to become a seaman.

We brought Jimmy’s stuff to the Gawad Kalinga unit a brother had passed on to him. It included the sundry curious items he had collected, like all those soft drink can rings he liked to fashion into belts or key holders, plus an assortment of gewgaws, stones and shells he had taken to amassing, as he had seen me do. 

His wife could stay on in the place with the three kids, the brothers assured everyone, although she’d need a sister to help her care for the young tots while she learned a livelihood. And of course we all agreed to help her out.

Back home, I miss him most when I tend to the greenery, for it was something we shared. He had brought me clumps of lilies last year, which we had set up on flowerpots and arrayed below the edge of my balcony. From the street I can see them in random bloom, one or two of the six pots at a time.

The Mary Palmer bougainvillea he had given as a 2008 Christmas gift seemed to have been struggling lately, turning scraggly just as he grew sick. Now I have to nurse it back to health, even as its tips turn pink and red in welcoming the early summer sun.

Some of his booty from neighboring villages — a golf bag, logs, tree stumps, hardened algae he had cleaned up and varnished — still adorn the carport. Prized among my Jimmy souvenirs is the log from Typhoon Milenyo that we had converted into a fancy stool, with a black pumice stone imbedded on an edge to conceal a hole. I sit on it some mornings, having coffee, Jimmy’s coffee, brewed after grinding whole beans he had purchased in Lipa last Christmas — as his gift to his tocayo Jimmy Abad and me. The good old barako tastes nutty and flavorful. I parcel what’s left to have a few cups weekly, so that driver Jimmy’s morning spirit wafts just a bit longer with us, enhancing the aroma of all the flowerpot rows, vines, and little gardens we had set up together.