This is how we do it

She did not want a party. “No party. Not this time.”

“But Ma, it will be your sixtieth! Doesn’t that call for a celebration? Besides, Jerome and Tots will be flying in from Manila!”

She pursed her lips, shook her head, tried to look convincing. “Then go throw a party for your friends. I have had it with parties. Too much work. My heart can’t take it anymore.”

Now she put it that way, who was I to argue? Something was wrong with her heart. Early last year, she was diagnosed with a condition which doctors said could prove fatal if left uncorrected. That much was confirmed by a friend of hers, also a doctor, whom she bumped into a week later — and who, as if to validate her point, suffered a stroke two days after (thankfully, she survived).

That got her attention. She ain’t stupid. The odds were good, in any case: 80-20 (or something in that range), the doctors had said.

Still.

“I suppose death isn’t too bad,” she had mused. “I have yet to hear anyone complain.”

Nonsense, we countered. What was it about about weeds and life expectancy? Having no such morbid witticism of our own, we Bisayas have embraced that Tagalog adage: Ang masamang damo, matagal mamatay (Bad grass does not die easily). “Besides,” my father piped in, “what was it the fortune-teller said?”

“Hah! That fraud.” Her friends had collared her into a palm-reading session. Reading #1, i.e., the bad “news”: One of her children would be a major headache that year (“Will it be you, ’dong?”). Reading #2, i.e., the good: She had nothing to worry about her health.

That had been less than two weeks before she went to the doctor for a casual check-up and received the heartbreaking news.

So… so much for palmistry.

“Does she do refunds?” someone asked, I forget who. It couldn’t have been me: I was too busy laughing. Not my father, either; he was doubled up, tears streaking his cheeks.

“It’s not funny.”

Oh, but it was.

“I guess it is, if it isn’t your chest they’re gonna cut open.” Then: “Have I mentioned I could die?”

---

Ma’s not one to take chances. The next few weeks she had spent mired in paperwork: insurance policies, mortgages, deeds of this-and-that… She’d seen enough fighting among (and with) her siblings over these things and had no desire to leave that kind of legacy to her family. “Here’s what you’ll get. Got any problem with that?”

Um…

“No? Good. Sign here, here, here… Now listen: I’ve already made arrangements for your father as well. Whatever he wants to do with it, let him. He can marry Yaya” — that would be Manang, the cook — “if he wishes; I’d be long past caring.”

Huh?

“Well? Anything’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I thought the point of marrying again is to do it with someone younger,” Manang said. “Or the closest you’ll get to something hard is when he coughs.”

“Shut up and answer the phone.”

It was my sister, calling long-distance.

“Your mother’s dying. Come home.”

“Tell her to bring some chocolate truffles from Trader Joe’s. I love those.”

“Shhh. He is? What did the doctors say?” To me: “Your brother-in-law’s sick.” To the phone: “Really? You tell your brother to stop smoking.” Back to me: “Hear that? It was the smoking that did it. How many times have I told you to quit that filthy habit? You’d be better off giving those cigarettes to your father. He’s old. He can afford to die.”

Hmmm… “More for us?”

Pa ignored that. Or maybe he hadn’t heard.

“Listen,” she was telling my sister. “I’ve made arrangements… What? What do you mean, which ones? You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you? If you’re so excited, you’ll be happy to know that I want to be buried right away.”

“Cremated, you mean,” my other sister, our youngest, corrected her.

Yeah — there’s that, too. “Don’t you dare put me on display when I’m dead,” she’d warned us. “I don’t want people coming up to my coffin, cooing, Oh, she was a good woman! Please, please spare me that indignity.”

“How about we wrap you up in a blanket and torch you at Pugaling instead?” That was the nearest beach; the cremation facility was three hours away. “Trust me, you won’t know the difference. Plus we’ll save on gas and service charges.”

“Pilosopo. Let’s see you laugh then.”

---

The doctors inserted a balloon into her mitral valve, inflating it. An intervention, they called it. She went into distress. We prayed. We waited. Mostly, we waited. Damn right I wasn’t laughing then.

They kept her intubated for two agonizing weeks — some sort of record, the doctors told her, if that was any consolation (it wasn’t) — and discharged her after two more.

She looked terrible. She lost weight. She croaked when she spoke. She couldn’t take three steps without gasping for breath. She kept saying she wanted to die if this was the kind of life she had to live from now on.

She was no fun to be around.

Seven months later she had outlived her son-in-law. “I hope he had good insurance,” she remarked. “Can you switch the channel to ANC? I want to check the dollar exchange rate.”

Sister was distraught. “What can I say?” Ma told her. “I’m barely alive myself.” She wasn’t exaggerating. The intervention had failed.

“We need to operate,” the doctor said. “Now.”

“Can I go home, get my stuff?”

“No.”

And so they bundled her off to the OR, cut her open, took out her heart, replaced the defective valve, stapled her ribs back into place, and stitched her back up. She spent all of three days in intensive care, and in less than a week she was up and about, eating lechon, going to the salon, and generally giving everyone a huge headache.

“Your mother is killing me,” her nurse reported.

“Actually, that’s good to hear.”

---

That was the year that was. This year marks my parents’ fortieth as a couple. She ribbed him about renewing their marriage vows.

“Over my dead body,” Pa said. “Once was bother enough.”

“Such a killjoy. I want to do it while I can still walk down the aisle. Please?”

Pa snorted.

“Then we’ll go on a second honeymoon! Make ourselves a baby, eh, Pa?”

“That,” I said, “is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”

---

Jerome arrived three days before her birthday. He came alone (Tots was suddenly swamped with work), gave her a necklace.

“But you shouldn’t have! This looks expensive. How much?”

“Tita!”

“You’re fast,” I told him.

“Think of it as insurance.”

Me, too. I threw her a party — the one she claimed she was too tired to throw herself. I made no effort to conceal the preparations and was surprised that she stuck to acting surprised.

Of course, she had invited no one — she really was sticking to her act.

We had to corral some relatives. The ones she liked, anyway.

“What a surprise!” they said. “How sweet!”

“Actually, it’s also a despedida for Jerome. We’re leaving for Boracay tomorrow.”

“You sneak,” Ma said. “I had a bad feeling about this.”

“It’s called hindsight,” I offered.

“And how long will you be gone?”

I refused to commit. “It’s not like you’re gonna die or something.”

“Oh, maybe I will! It’ll be your fault, leaving me to do all the work around here while you’re off cavorting at the beach. That’ll be the death of me, you’ll see.”

“No it won’t. Your heart’s mightier than Angelina Jolie’s. Meaner, too.”

“Gago.”

“Love you too, Ma.” Of course I do. She owns my heart. She really does.

Photos: Heart, Wellsphere; The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio, Wikipedia