Now, that would be a first in Manila. Wide and brightly lit streets, shaded trees, lagoons and stone benches; full landscaping with piped-in music plus a magnificent chapel. Each garden is designed to look uniform and neat. No ghoulish tombstones or dark shadows to remind you of a Hammer/Dracula film. It’s not going to look like a cemetery. "What is it then, Mama?" Ah, err…a cemetery! That was 1961.
The idea of death and dying was something that was never freely discussed whether the family could afford the burial cost or not. My mother’s high school chum was the "brave" one who dared jolt people out of their comfort zones. Paying for a memorial park and a memorial plan even with an affordable, monthly payment scheme was never a topic of conversation. We bury the thought hopefully to gather cobwebs as if by doing so would dismiss or "kill" the need altogether. Fortunately, some enterprising mind thought that the 1960s were the favorable time to introduce a bright-and-breezy concept of a resting place. It was time to give death’s macabre and frightening face a "makeover".
Fast forward to 1995. A good friend suddenly died of aneurysm. Collectively, we mourned and kept vigil. Privately, we moved away to get lost in our thoughts of happy times spent with our departed friend. She had many unfulfilled dreams.
After the cremation, we gathered in silence unable to speak but all waiting to exhale. One colleague led us to the terrace and gave us each a balloon. "We can’t say goodbye to our friend, not just yet. But we must remember that if we don’t do it now, she will never find complete peace. Let us pause to say our own last farewell and when you are ready, release your balloon. The balloon will be the symbol of letting go; she is going home at last." I watched as my balloon snaked gingerly up the bright, blue and assuring sky. Suddenly there was a whiff of cold air. We let out a nervous laugh. It must be our friend blowing a kiss, a farewell kiss!
Is it true that some people have the gift to anticipate their dying day? When we were based overseas, I made it a point to spend the holidays with my mother in Manila. "I’ll see you next year, Mama."
Instead of returning my hug, she winked and in a sing-song voice replied, "Maybe not?" I felt a cold chill but dismissed it and gave my mother a scolding. "Don’t talk that way, Ma. You come from a bloodline that lives life to the fullest." In six months she was gone. There wasn’t anything critically wrong with her that couldn’t have been addressed. She simply decided that it was time to follow God’s time.
In a book entitled A Very Easy Death, Simone de Beauvoir gave a moving record of her mother’s death from cancer. It brought back many familiar scenes of dear ones dying and the torment the body and the emotions have to endure.
Ringed eyes, that thinning frame, the yellowish, pale and ashen face, the dilemma and the anguish and of children being the last to admit that their mother or father is dying. Should we allow them to conduct more tests, to probe or operate on the frail and exhausted patient? Simone wrote "The doctor was going to put a tube into her nose to clean out her stomach. But what’s the good of tormenting her, if she is dying? Let her die in peace. Dr N passed by me. I stopped him. White coat, white cap: A young man with an unresponsive face. Why this tube? Why torture Maman, since there’s no hope? He gave me a withering look, ‘I am doing what has to be done.’ "
Simone described the all-too-familiar hospital room: "The bed was in the middle of the room with its head against the wall. On the left there was an intravenous dripper, connected to Maman’s arm. From her nose, there emerged a tube of transparent plastic that passed through some complicated apparatus and ended in a jar. Her nose was pinched and her face had shrunk even more; it had the saddest air of submission...
You meet two kinds of doctors: the doctor who doesn’t assume any "consequential airs", who talks to the patient like a human being and who answers all the anxious questions of relatives. The second is like Simoun Beauvoir’s Dr P. – aloof and aggressive. He treats his patients as just another science project and looks down on relatives as his "occupational hazard", those that he can tantalize or confuse with his all-knowing conjectures. He is also callous. Be careful. He is unmindful of the patient even if she’s black, blue and traumatised. Raw wounds haven’t started to heal when another intrusion by needle or surgical knife is introduced to her beat-up skin. This doctor is driven and infatuated with technique. He can’t wait to add another score to his tally board emboldened by remarks like, "Would you like me to have left that in her stomach?’ said Dr N aggressively, showing me a jar full of yellowish substance. I did not reply. In the corridor, he said "At dawn she had scarcely four hours left. I have brought her back to life.’ I did not venture to ask him, ‘for what?’"
Who can’t remember the parade of medical students and interns poking at the patient’s swollen body at all hours of the day? "Maman groans under their fingers. She cries out. Morphine injection. She still groans. "another injection" we beg. They are against it; too much morphine would paralyze the intestine. What are they hoping for then?"
You start having doubts over the whole Hippocratic Oath of upholding or preserving life at any cost. Would you allow them to operate? Would you have agreed? Your inner voice tells you "Don’t let them operate on her."
Relatives feel helpless and dumb at all the medical jargon and the medical instruments that surround the bed. What’s more frustrating is the fact that there’s nothing much one can do except hold the patient’s hand (if hers have not yet been tied down by tubes and needles); caress it, pat or wipe her brow and maybe ease back a strand of hair that strayed to her forehead. Do anything that would bring relief to her exhausted body. Simone wrote, "I had to give her something to drink, arrange her pillows, or her plait, move her leg, water her flowers, open the window, close it, read her the paper, answer her questions, wind up the watch."
What about the humiliation? The body, infested with bed sores from having stayed motionless in one position, the flimsy hospital gown that has replaced all decent garments and the demoralizing embarrassment of having to rely on another person to do one’s toilet. The body can’t pass water anymore, she is incontinent, and she must wear a diaper. And the sight of that tired, ravaged body, almost naked.
All day long the children daze the patient with hopes of getting well. "When-you-are-better, we will do this or do that, go somewhere, make this or that…." We dream or try to think of happier, healthier times. Is there any peaceful, pain-less solution that will stop the torment and agony?
They say that we cry at funerals because we mourn for ourselves. We pay for the sin of outliving our loved ones with a thousand piercing regrets. But even this we can prepare for. Simoun de Beauvoir wrote "funerals are actually a "dress rehearsal" for our own burial although no one can escape from experiencing it in solitude." When you expire, you do it alone.
How to have an easy death? Say goodbye while we are sound, able and whole. If that is not possible, forgive and forget all regrets. Fill your hearts with happy thoughts that come with warm and lasting memories. Play songs and music that are close to your heart and those that remind you of your loved ones. Treat goodbye with a "we’ll meet again" attitude – and make it come from the heart. Fill your heart with God’s spirit and grace. Above all, remember that Death is not mighty because it only takes one "passing" to wake up to a full, everlasting life. The transition from this world to the next should be a journey of a lifetime with a nice twist: like watching a beautiful balloon that floated home to the bright, blue and assuring sky.