I was 10 when I heard it for the very first time. No one would look after me at home so my mother brought me along with her across the street to the a neighbor’s. She was one of my mother’s bestfriends. My mom offered a crying shoulder and a helping hand to the family. As my mother did some chores in our neighbor’s kitchen, I was left wandering around the house. In the living room of the house was a bed — a deathbed — and in it was my mother’s friend, trying to catch her last breaths. Two of her children, both in their 30s, sat by the bed as they moved their ears closer to her mouth. She was finding it difficult to utter even the slightest syllable. I remember thinking to myself how weird she sounded. I concluded that time that it was the sound that dying people make. It was the sound of death.
Outside, on the porch, was the youngest of her children, Ate Lovely. Of all the three siblings, I liked her the most. She was kind, friendly and spirited. It was a surprise to see her on her knees, begging in front of a man with a hat on. I had never seen him before. Like her siblings inside the house, Ate Lovely, too, was crying. And she let out a train of please’s while holding the hand of the cold man with a hat on, who could not even look at her even for a second.
“Please po, please,” she pleaded. “Pumasok po kayo sa loob kahit sandali lang.”
The man with a hat on gave no response other than a slight turning of his head away from the poor woman.
“Kausapin n’yo lang po,” Ate Lovely continued. “Parang awa nyo na po.”
My mom found me standing at the doorway and invited me to try the dish she cooked. Ate Lovely was still weeping. So were her siblings in the living area. They stayed like that for more than an hour.
As I passed through the living area on my way out to play, I saw the man with the hat on enter the house and sit beside my mother’s bestfriend. The man, too, moved his left ear closer to her lips, awaiting words. But the words did not come. She was too weak to even control her lips. All three siblings gathered around the bed.
The man removed the hat, held her hand, and said in almost a whisper, “OK na. Wag mo nang isipin yun. Wala na sa akin yun.”
And then it happened. The sound of death stopped. The sound of loss followed. She was gone.
Viewed 2149 times by 881 visitors this month
