Something Phenomenal

Phenomenal: Twenty Two

Day 11 back in the hospital

Days in the ICU was a series of waking up and being unconscious, hearing voices, machine noises, and eyes blinded by lights and not knowing if it's day or night.

When I wake up this afternoon I heard the voice of my Mom talking to other doctors.

"We'll have to transfer her to the hospice care."

"Your daughter had survived longer than the life expectancy of her case."

"You've already done your best as a mother, as a doctor."

And then Mom was crying and that evening, when everybody left the room, she's there watching me going back and forth from sleeping and waking up.

And she's touching my hair and I could feel her tears on my cheeks and she's humming a song I've heard from her a long time ago when I was still a child.

I've never saw this much pain from her since it all started and for her, no matter how old I am, she still sees me as her little girl who hugs her tightly whenever she came home from the hospital.

I woke up and sat on my bed. "Is there something wrong, Mom?"

Mom's eyes were red and swollen at the lids as if she's been crying for a long time. Even her voice was raw and parched when she asked how I was feeling.

I feel nothing. My body feels painful and heated and uncomfortable like something that isn't mine. And there's a hollow feeling in my chest that digs into me and I feel empty.

She held the side of my face with her warm hands. "Gabriel, I... have to transfer you out of the ICU."

Mom explains my condition the way a doctor explains to her patient, calm, composed, direct. But I could feel the tremble in her hand as she touched me and then she told me the cancer had progressed since the relapse and the treatments were no longer controlling the cancer.

"How long will I live?"

That's when my Mom's mask slipped and gone was the professional doctor that everyone looks up to. She started sobbing in front of me, the way a mother cry in front of her dying child. She was sobbing uncontrollably while holding my hands in both of hers as if we were both praying.

"Don't cry. I'm okay." Pinahid ko ang luha niya.

"I'm sorry... Gabriel."

But she didn't need to apologize. She's done everything for me that not all mother's could do. She might not be someone who's always been in our side by she's someone who looks after the smallest things to make sure we're okay.

I was smiling while holding her cheeks and wiping her tears with my hands. "It's okay, Mom."

She held my hands and said in her broken voice. "You rarely cry, you know. When you were diagnosed nearly five years ago, you rarely shed tears. When you were in your first cycles of treatment you rarely complain to me no matter how painful it was. When you had to give up everything again because of the relapse, you cry so little and instantly pull yourself up and told us everything's temporary and you're going to be alright."

Niyakap niya ako nang mahigpit. "You've been really strong, Gabriel. I will always choose you as my daughter even in a hundred lifetime."

I bit my lips and blink back my tears. But then my shoulders started shaking and my eyes started watering and I was crying like a kid in my mom's arms.

"I'm scared..." I told her. "Mom, I'm so scared."

When I was younger someone asked me if I was afraid to die. I didn't know where I pulled out the confidence to say I wasn't afraid. The world is bad enough and it's the gateway from all of the suffering. I'm ready anytime.

But when you're face with death, you will realize you will never be ready.

You'll never be ready to leave, to give it all up no matter how painful things are. Even though you feel like you're in a pit and couldn't move forward, you'll realize there's a lot more you have to know, to see, to experience.

When you're about to die, they say your life flash before your eyes. But it's not always the case for everyone. Sometimes it's the future that you will see.

The days that you might have had. The sunrises and sunsets you still have to chase, rainy afternoons and stormy nights, and the smell of breakfast, the laughs and conversations with your favorite people and the hundred places you still haven't visited.

You'll see before your eyes the next Christmas, or your next birthdays, the next years and the future you've always wanted to see. And you'll realize how afraid you are to loss it all, and then you will want to fight a little more, endure a little more, and to wish for a little more time... to live, no matter how hard it is to stay alive.

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