A death in the family

We thought we had it licked. Death is a certainty for all of us, but it is certainty we avoid even as we grow old. My husband, Bert as I called him (Berting to his family and friends) died at 75. The time of death was put at 12.06, an awkward time straddling between the last hour of August 20 and the first of August 21. The death certificate states the immediate cause of death as cardiac arrest.

But it had not been that simple. From the time he first became ill, a mild stroke two days after New Year’s day, he would lurch from one illness to another that he would overcome and win the battle for life. From stroke to colon bleeding to pneumonia — he surmounted it all and was near full recovery just a few days before he died. He was able to stand with help and sat on an easy chair for hours. He was going to be well enough for his 76th birthday on October 2. That was the schedule. His doctors told him for a man his age and what he had undergone and won over was a wonder. One of his doctors teased him that she would wager her fat he would not suffer another stroke and was well on his way to normalcy unless, of course he had an infection.

And then it came. He did get an infection and one we could not fight because it came from within him, a virus from chicken pox that stayed dormant in all those who had it in childhood, but could be reactivated when immunity was weak and comes up in old age. It worked so fast we could not get at it.

An emergency dialysis was needed to get rid of the toxins from the virus ravishing his body. But this not before he had won yet another battle, yet another risk to hurdle when a catheter was inserted close to an artery to prepare him for emergency dialysis. It was a success. He was now ready for dialysis but when the machine was wheeled in his vital signs ‑ all normal – suddenly went flat. CPR was done several times as doctors and nurses attempted desperately to revive his failing heart. But it was for naught. He had come to his life’s end with our children Marta and Alberto Jr. with his wife Joanne and me by his side, while Veronica, Ricardo and Eduardo who were abroad through their mobiles, to tell him how much we loved him before he died.

I had often used the phrase like “a death in the family” to describe sad feelings on occasions but it is not until a death in the family happens that the full force of the phrase assumes its meaning and appropriateness. Bert had his faults but his virtues far outweighed the faults. While many people saw that exterior, sometimes intolerant and grumpy, I was privileged to see deeper into his character. At the heart was a tenacity for perfection and achievement and his frustration when he fell short of those standards. It was a joy to know that the children learned the lessons of his life well. Their eulogies came from childhood experiences of having to live with a demanding father who wanted his children ‘to go and cross the abyss.’

I wanted a quiet funeral, no announcements, and only the immediate family to be present during the last rites. He did not want to be cremated because he joked that he did want to give God a hard time to put him together again, nor did he want an open coffin because he did not want people gawking at him. The next generation won and had a more public funeral albeit a short one, he was not cremated as he wished but we opened the casket to be consistent with that side of him which was public. Immediately after the funeral we rummaged through all the pictures and files not so much of a career but of a lifetime that embraced both the mundane and the extraordinary.

It must be said that without his support I would not have been able to go through the controversy which followed the writing of the Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. He accompanied me to an exile which cut down a ‘safe’ and rising career as an executive in Meralco Securities as others had chosen, whether it was under the Lopezes or the Marcoses. But he followed the road to high adventure and more importantly it was as he said the right thing to do. While in exile in London, he organized the Confederation of Filipino Overseas Organizations that became a model for politicizing Filipino workers who did not want to get ‘involved’. More needs to be put together but that can wait. For now we are occupied shifting from grief and pride. As for me when the children will have gone to their own careers and families my task will be how to reconcile preoccupation with mundane things such as politics and writing columns and the experience of death and its incomprehensibility. For their father’s last rites the children chose Sarah Brightman’s Nella Fantasia:

In my fantasy I see a just world,

Where everyone lives in peace and honesty.

I dream of souls that are always free

Like the clouds that float

Full of humanity in the depths of the soul.

In my fantasy I see a bright world

Where each night there is less darkness.

I dream of spirits that are always free,

Like the clouds that float

In my fantasy exists a warm wind,

That blows into the city, like a friend.

I dream of souls that are always free,

Like the clouds that float

Full of humanity.