It was 8 p.m. or thereabouts. Oprah was on TV and I was having dinner — burnt toast (my fault, of course, as I have no maid) and cheese. I stopped to wonder what I would watch on TV before going to bed. What day is it? Tuesday. Tuesday! It’s my deadline night. By this time I have usually written my piece and sent it. But today I left home at 2 p.m. to go to a meeting in faraway Quezon City. Took an hour to get there, two hours to meet, another hour and a half of slowly crawling rush-hour traffic. So I got home feeling “aaaaargh.”
But that wasn’t the worst of times. Yesterday was my mother’s 87th birthday, a difficult occasion for a daughter. It may be her last, who knows? It’s hard to predict. But two of my daughters are abroad, one is sick and my son had a recording so I went alone. My daughters sent musicians, believing in their hearts that musicians would heal or ease their grandmother. My children have told me they don’t like to see my mother the way she is now. The last time they came over, she did not recognize them. She doesn’t recognize me as her daughter, either, but when she looks at me I know I am someone she loves, and someone who really loves her back. She is sick and needs my attention. So I go and I hold her, kiss her, tell her I love her. What else can I do?
The musicians have begun to play and over their music is my mother’s loud voice saying, “Nownownownownow. Dadadadada.” Then clearly she shouts, “Nakakainis iyan,” and her facial expression really shows that they are irritating her. I try to calm her down, teach her to clap. Her co-patients enjoy the music but she definitely doesn’t except for a brief instant when she looks at me, smiles and says, “Nice.” A moment of lucidity.
Afterwards I tell my mother that I must go and speak to the musicians. They tell me that playing at the home is like a break for them. They enjoy doing it. So I am truly grateful.
Back to my mother, she shouts at me, “O ano, dadadadada?” I apologize, telling her I had to entertain them because they had entertained her but she did not understand. She sulked and remained angry for a while. I sat beside her and peeped inside her butterfly caftan to check on the Quantum Pendant that Judge Veneracion sent for her.
The Quantum Pendant is a necklace you wear because it imparts scalar energy that influences your health. It is one of those new energy things. I am willing to try anything just to make my mother more comfortable. So she wears it. It was still there, next to her skin. I thought about her a year ago; she was much weaker then. She hardly talked last year while on her chemical medicines. Now her voice is very loud. She moves around a lot more. She is much stronger than she was last year. I think it’s the combination of her herbals and the Quantum Pendant. But she still has Alzheimer’s. I guess it takes much longer to cure, if it’s curable at all. But definitely she is physically stronger and that knowledge gives me much comfort.