Life is a cycle. We leave this Earth the same way we came --- vulnerable and weak. I'm a student nurse and just had my last day of rotation in Hospicio De San Jose. My Clinical Instructor asked me, what have you learned during your duty here? And I said, 'life is a cycle' has never been clearer to me. We came in this world vulnerable and incapable of taking care of ourselves and we would go the same way. The first time I saw the old people in Hospicio, I asked myself, how could their children and family leave them in a place like this? I could see the loneliness and the sadness clear as day in their eyes. Did those children forget how their parents have taken care of them? Nurtured them? Fed them and changed their diapers? How could they not do it for their own parents now that they are old and weak? It just seemed so unacceptable for me. Then there came the reasons, their old parents were better off in a nursing home, they don't have the time to take care of them, they have their own family to take care of... All seem so plausible but is it enough? Would those reasons be enough? Those grandmothers we took care of in Hospicio were as good as abandoned. It always make my heart squeeze when my 'lola' thanks me every night when I say good night to her because I have to go home, she always say "Maraming salamat sa pag aasikaso mo sa akin!" (Thank you for taking care of me) with a big smile. It always leave me teary eyed, she doesn't talk much, she's having a hard time and she has Alzheimer's --- I know hours later she wouldn't even know I existed in her narrow life but that 'thank you'? It's priceless. They are cranky, demanding and most of the time snobbish but it was endearing. We feed them, change their diapers, tuck them to bed --- it was hard, we are nurses not care givers but after doing it for days, I realized, my mom did this to me when I was a baby, why should I shy away from doing this too? One day, I will be the one lying in the bed with a stinky diaper and would my own children change it? I sure as hell would take care of my parents when they grow old, they'd never be better off in a nursing home. They'd be safer with my own watch, I told myself. But that clinical rotation not only taughtt me about life, it also allowed me to ponder on what is death all about. During our last day, one grandma whom we also took care of, died. I watched as the life slowly oozed away from her. It was hard and sad. I wasn't her kin, I don't even know her aside from her name, but watching her leave was hard. I asked myself, if it was my time and I know that I only had hours left, what would I do? That grandma spent it praying. She didn't talk, heck, she couldn't even move but somehow, I know she was praying. Tears were falling from her slightly open eyes. She smelled funny, now I realized, she smelled like death. She was so cold, so unresponsive that it was scary. My clinical eye, eager for knowledge catalogued a dying old person's body as she slowly dies --- she defacated a real foul smelling liquid, her limbs were hard we could hardly move her, she was so cold it was as if no blood flowed theough her veins to warm her, she breathed shallowly, and her veins started to rupture. She was in a great deal if pain and all we could do was watch. Then hours later, right after we came back from our afternoon activity, we found her dead. Just like that. A life gone with nobody else beside her. I wondered, what then? If she wasn't in there anymore, where is she? Did she cross over? Did she see the light? It just seemed so unreal because I could see her lying there, so still but I also know that she's not in there anymore. She's gone to God know's where. Maybe travelling to meet St. Peter, or whatever it is we believe about death. So what is death, really? The moment when your soul leaves your body and you move on to another plane? Or is it just the ending of an existence? Is saying good bye enough? Is saying 'I'm going to miss you' enough? Then to that grandma who died in a nursing home, who would grieve for her? Us? The student nurses who wasn't even of her blood? The nurses and other grandmas she barely even talked to? Too many questions but I don't have answers.
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