28 July 2020 | 1:38 pm
It was an hour and ten minutes later after I just called the ICU Nursing Station. I wondered why they called back sooner than usual and I thought they had the doctor with them calling us for an update. But what I heard was the opposite. They called in to inform me that Papa's heart stopped and they were reviving him.
I froze for a few seconds not knowing how to react. Looking back I think I was just calm. I did not feel panic. I did not worry. I texted my brother about five minutes later after it finally came to my senses that it could only go two ways at that point. Minutes went by so quickly and still there were no calls. I didn't want to call them back thinking they needed to focus their attention to my then dying father. It was only at 2:06 pm that I sent a text message and asked that they call us back soon.
At 2:27 pm, that's when I got the call that delivered us the heartbreaking news. My father did not make it.
Still at that point we were waiting for the results of his swab test that was taken on July 23rd, Thursday. I didn't feel any blood rush, I didn't feel my heart beating faster than usual. I immediately dialed my brother's number as I was rushing upstairs to also inform my mother. It was when I opened the door and uttered the words "Ma, wala na si Papa..." that my tears started to fall. When I said the same to my brother over the phone, I cried harder. It felt like something heavy was stomping on my chest. I'm hearing my mom crying out loud behind me asking repeatedly what I meant. With just a few minutes of crying, I had to wipe my tears and pick myself up right away to face my son as calmly as I can. I went back to our living room where my son, Eljo, was playing and I told him that his Lolo Papa is gone. That he won't be coming home anymore.
His reaction? He was calm, as if it was just an ordinary statement. Maybe because he's still young to feel the weight of losing someone. Maybe because there were no goodbyes. Goodbyes make him feel really sad. He asked what I meant with Papa not coming home and I had to reference it back to Science. I told him to recall how we talked about how someone's heart stops and doctors try to revive it. And that unfortunately, Papa's heart did not make it. Eljo had just turned nine the previous day. And we even said we will hold another celebration when his Lolo Papa gets home from the hospital. I made a conscious decision not to make my son feel that his birthday will always come before my father's death.
It was only a few more minutes later that I got a call back that my father's swab test results came out positive for Covid-19. The rest of the afternoon we were busy calling the hospital to seek advise on how we will go about my father's remains, looking for a funeral service, how we would settle the hospital bills, reporting our situation to the health authorities in our location. I am not sure if our situation is in any way difficult or better. We were not allowed to go out to claim him. We were considered PUM (Persons Under Monitoring) even as of this writing, because we were living together with a PUI patient at the time Papa was admitted to the hospital. We were advised to stay at home and wait for instructions.
It was only later in the evening that we managed to settle on some arrangements and decided to wait for the next day to continue with it. There was so little we can do at that time since we were mostly doing it remotely. My brother lived in a different city and was living with elders and so we were trying to prepare as much as we could so there is minimal exposure for him when he goes outside. In between things, I managed to inform few significant people in my life apart from those at work. I got to talk to my best friend who is also a medical front liner based in the US. The moment I heard her voice over the line, my voice started to break and tears came falling down much harder than earlier that day. All those questions, doubts, what if's, what could have been...
I asked Papa why he left me so early. Why he didn't say goodbye to me. I apologized hard to him to say that I'm sorry I wasn't there with him in his final moments. That I'm sorry if he felt like he was alone. I knew he was scared but I wasn't there to comfort him. My heart breaks because I did not know how it was for him and what he had to go through. That I didn't get to hold his hand nor give him one last hug...
I cried myself to sleep that night.
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