Regrets
My mother died last month. She was 82 years old. She died of a heart attack, her second major one, after recovering from the first one she had in mid-May. Luckily, the fatal heart attack was apparently relatively painless, as she drifted off while her heart gradually gave up.
My sister called me late at night, crying "Hindi na magising ang nanay." I asked her if she was still alive, she said "Oo, may pulse pa." I urged her to call an ambulance from the nearest hospital. I jumped into my car and rushed to my mom's house. After 20 minutes of panicked driving, I arrived to find that no ambulance had arrived yet. I tried to put my cheek in front of her mouth, to detect some sort of respiration, but I failed to feel any. Nevertheless, my sister was insisting she was still alive, and I felt I should exhaust all means to save her. I decided to bring her to the hospital myself. While enroute to the hospital, I kept talking to my mom, that she should hold on, don't leave us, we're right about there.
After another 15 minutes of frantic driving, we finally arrived at the hospital (the frigging ambulance was still there -- it never left!). Nurses and attendants scrambled and rushed my mom to the ER.
During that crucial period, I was praying to God not to let her die. I even snapped at my sister for suggesting that we call a Catholic priest for the last rites, saying that she has no right to give up. I texted other people to pray for my mom's recovery. I went to the hospital chapel, but its doors were locked so I just sat on a stray stool and fervently prayed like I never did before. Some minutes later, my sister approached me with the terrible news, that my mom was gone.
I pride myself on being a person with admirable self-control. When my father died 10 years ago, I never broke down. I only cried once, when I saw my mom sitting all alone in front of my father's casket, as I realized the pain that she must be going through, to be left alone after over 40 years of marriage. But for the rest of my father's funeral I was a picture of rock-hard stability, compared to the rest of my siblings who were alternately somber and hysterical.
Not this time. I never cried as hard and as loud as I did on that fateful moment when my sister embraced me with the devastating news. I guess it was the finality of it, the realization that all your hopes, prayers and bargains with God were for naught, that despite all your efforts in an eleventh-hour attempt to avert the inevitable, the decision had been made and it was non-negotiable.
It was as if a thousand sorrows and regrets poured out of me, forgotten feelings bottled up for years finally escaping in a flood of anguish. My own sister was afraid that I would get a heart attack myself. After a few minutes, I regained my composure and went back to the ER.
While my sister was out talking to the nurse about the administrative paperwork, I had a little time alone with my mom, her body now increasingly getting cold. As I stroked her hair and held her hands I could only weep silently for all the missed opportunities and unsaid words that were forever gone.
My family members have never been demonstrative about our feelings for each other. I guess we were just brought up that way. For my entire life I have never told my mom that I loved her. For that, I felt immeasurable pain and guilt. Now she will never hear that from me. As I held her lifeless hand, I whispered to her, "I am so sorry for never having the courage to say this. I am so sorry for never acting on the need to tell you. I love you, inay."
Even now, 1 month after she passed on, I still feel a heavy heart whenever I remember that moment. Whenever I go to our ancestral house and see her room and her stuff, still as we left it that fateful night in June, I feel pain and sorrow at what could have been.
I last saw her 2 days before she died. I visited her at home and had lunch with her. We talked about light topics, fleeting matters that were worthless had anyone known she would be dying 54 hours later. I remember feeling harried because I wanted to leave earlier to catch a good parking space at the mall.
I said my goodbyes to her, and I sensed she didn't want me to go. I would have stayed longer but I rationalized to myself that I could visit her again next weekend. Normally after every visit I give her some cash to support the household expenses, as the pension she gets is woefully inadequate. But at that time I was a little short myself, because I had just settled her cardiologist's fees from her previous hospital confinement. So for this visit I was only able to give her a third of what I usually gave. I think that also compounded her sadness, as she contemplated that she was getting to be a burden to other people.
If I could rewind my life, I would have stayed the whole day and made her laugh, and maybe say that I loved her and that I was grateful to her for all her unconditional love towards her undeserving son.
To anyone reading this, I hope that you can avoid the painful lesson that I had to learn. Life is short and fleeting. In the next moment, everything can change, and everything you love and value can be gone in an instant. Be forthright with your loved ones. Show that you love and care for them. And not just in words, but by actions.
Dying Broke
Reading an interesting book titled "Die Broke" which basically posits that one should spend all the wealth he/she accumulates, before dying. To do this, the author argues that we should not aim at our careers as one long mad rush to get to the top, after which we all fall into the abyss of retirement. Rather, we should look at our jobs simply as our means to receive incomes -- so we should not feel guilty about looking for the next job offer that pays better than the present one, and to do that continuously until old age. We should not quest for any fulfillment within our so-called careers. However, fulfillment comes from spending your hard-earned money in areas you like, when you like to. The author states that we should just do the best we can in our jobs, then go home. Quite a tempting notion, I think.
Despite my having a senior management role, now I am increasingly becoming a clock-watcher myself, following the author's advice. After I render 8 hours of intense work for the company, I close my laptop and walk out of the office with almost no guilt. When my boss calls me on my cellphone when I'm at home, I mentally note the number of hours of discussion and subtract that from my face time at work.
Then I look at my bankbook and think, what should I reward myself with today?
I don't know whether I'm a recovering burnout victim or just discovering the inner slacker within me. But, heck, it feels good.
"Penitencia"
It's a Maundy Thursday and here I am toiling away alone at the office. It's bad enough that I am working while the rest of the country are either enjoying their much-deserved summer vacation or recharging their spiritual batteries in reminiscing the sufferings of Jesus Christ. What's worse is that I am doing this involuntarily, and without overtime pay at that.
You see, I work for the Philippine office of a global multinational, whose regional managers demand to receive their reports on the dot and do not tolerate "excuses" (like holidays).
So is this the cross I have to bear? Is there a payoff somewhere at the end? I feel like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, agonizing over his situation. No doubt, anyone from my company who reads this will not feel offended over my near-blasphemy, as they are all agnostics. My boss himself admitted that he does not belong to nor recognize any religion.
Well, they may not admit it, but they seem to belong to one cult -- the cult of corporate profitability.
I'm hungry, tired, and miserable. I wanna go home.
30 Schoolchildren Die of Food Poisoning
Depressed by the news that about 30 kids in Bohol, Philippines died after eating a cassava snack sold outside their school. Apparently cassava is a root crop which, if not prepared and cooked properly, may contain a form of cyanide that can easily kill an adult, let alone a child. However, it did not seem to be a deliberate attempt to poison, as the snack vendor herself was downed by the poison, when she tried to prove that her food was safe to eat. Nonetheless, it looks like the carelessness of one person can result in tragic consequences to the most innocent.
Sometimes you wonder whether there is any meaning to this life. Those kids were totally oblivious of the fact that they were going to die that fateful day. Their parents were clueless that their children were going to suffer a horrible, painful death when they sent them off to school that morning. Did any of them deserve to die like this?
Hey, shit happens, they say. "Nobody wanted this to happen." Tell that to their grieving parents.
Hating My Job
My job pays the bills. My job gives me spending money. My job lends me a company car and laptop. My job gives me free internet access.
Those are the only good things about my job.
But I hate the heavy workload, the stress, the mindless pressure from my clueless superiors, the backbiting from my scheming officemates, the sloth and gross ignorance of my subordinates, the arrogance of my customers, the crabbiness of my peers. And the list goes on and on.
Why do I persist? Perhaps because know it's hard to find a good job out there, let alone the "dream job" where you're supposed to like what you're doing so much that you're overjoyed that they're paying you to do it. Perhaps because the uncertainty of finding another job forces me to suffer the certainty of this detestable excuse for work.
BTW, job coaches will always say, "Think about what you want to do, then find a job that's related to that interest." Unfortunately, what my foremost interest is, right now, is to STOP working and to loaf to my heart's content!
I often wonder, assuming I do get another job, how the heck do I know I wouldn't find myself in a worse situation? When companies hire, the selling goes both ways -- I try to dazzle them with my brilliance while they try to seduce me with their perks and work environment. So maybe the disappointment goes both ways as well?
Anybody out there with a job offer?
Terrorists at our doorstep
The Abu Sayyaf bandit group has claimed responsibility for 3 Valentine's Day bombing incidents in the Philippines. They set off bombs in a bus, a bus terminal and a shopping mall.
In their statement, they vowed to continue their strikes, while making no distinctions between civilians and soldiers. They claim that civilians choose their own government; thus, if their government "oppresses Muslims", then the civilians are equally guilty of oppression and are fair game for the Abu Sayyaf brand's of punishment.
I find this logic untenable, leading me to believe that the Abu Sayyaf are either cowardly or stupid. For one thing, the rest of Muslim Mindanao are participating in the support of the Philippine government by voting, paying taxes, and using public services. Does that mean that the Abu Sayyaf will also bomb its own Muslim brothers -- the very people they claim to defend?
From another angle, assuming that the people also detest the current administration (the way the Abu Sayyaf does), why do they deserve to die? Many citizens in Manila, Davao and General Santos Cities have no love lost for President Gloria Arroyo. Yet they are lumped together and exposed to the same dangers as the "oppressors" the Abu Sayyaf seek to punish.
If the agenda was to destabilize, then doing so by public bombing shows the Abu Sayyaf's self-centeredness and wanton disregard for human life. They are better off doing assassination of the military and government leaders they despise. They may even get some public sympathy for their cause.
If the agenda was to divert attention and resources from the war in Jolo, that was a miscalculation. More than ever, the Arroyo government will throw in more resources in an effort to quickly douse the fire.
If the intention was to provoke the government to implement more stringent measures and thus make more mistakes against the Muslim population, then it shows the Abu Sayyaf's bloodthirsty nature that they would offer more lives of their brethren, just to promote their "cause."
No doubt, the Abu Sayyaf are a spent force pretending to have ideological grounding but in reality are mere bandits seeking international recognition, power and money at any cost. The sooner they are hunted down and destroyed like the vermin that they really are, the better for both Muslims and Christian Filipinos.
The Remains of My Day
Hectic with a capital "H".
The past 2 days have been quite tiring, as I've been squiring about town a foreign guest who wanted to meet my customers. While he speaks passably good English, his accent and intonation make him quite difficult to understand. So apart from escort, I also double as a virtual interpreter -- to customers who speak little English.
Sorry, not just hectic, but a headache as well.
God, I can't believe I just wrote that.
Time for a sleeping pill.
