The indestructible fridge has just given up its ghost. The balloon posts under dad’s room are sagging mortally. The wooden floorboards under my feet feel softer than usual—could the colony of termites have regained its appetite? All things natural die, finally.
If anything annoys me in birthdays for the elderly, it is when some guest toasts the celebrant with “May you live up to 100 years old!” Maybe I take it too seriously. It makes me cringe. It reminds me of that Chinese wish, “May you live in interesting times!”
My friend Ning Tan tells me her father’s (my contemporary) best old-age advice to her ever was, “Don’t grow old!” Finally I’m understanding it. I just received my complete health results. All parts of me are in perfect condition, and yet I got so depressed! I don’t want to die like my husband, shackled to every life support that he wished for. But the alternative is just as grim—living forever!
Of course, there are oldsters in their late 90s who truly wish for and strive to reach the centenary mark. They are the exceptions. We, who are still getting there, are seeing more than enough. How many aged people are still healthy at an advanced age? Just count the pills they consume! It could well be the only glue that holds them together! Most oldies are crooked, gnarled, memory- or sense-impaired, sick, or broke.
And very few people just die peacefully in their sleep. More spend all their (and their kin’s) life savings on hospital stays that drag on and on for the fatally ill. So it is not always true that the dead can’t take it all away with them. Those left standing who can’t afford hospital care have to approach others for help. (Painful for them, but also for those who can’t afford to help.) Nor can one just fervently want to die and death will come (as some like to believe).
Enough money
Today, due to better nutrition and medical advances, we are told, people will live 10 or 20 years longer than their parents. That, therefore, one must be sure to save enough money to provide for those extra years. (A bit too late for me to do anything about that, don’t you think?)
“But you have good children,” you will inevitably be told, “who can well afford to provide for you.” Of course they will always take care of me because they love me. But I think to myself, why would I want to tax my children because they’re “good” and “love me”? My own middle-class parents and my husband’s parents never passed on their burdens to us. It’s only fair that I live within my budget and continue the tradition (unless, of course, I live to a hundred!).
No one is really afraid of death itself. I remember my sick husband asking me when there were tsunamis all over the world, “What will we do if a tsunami hits our house?” I said, “We will hold hands and meet the waves together! Then we will take a deep breath and the next instant be in another dimension!”
There’s a belief in anthroposophy that if you’ve lived a just life you can time your last breath so that you are transported to the next life without ever undergoing the pains of dying. (Every old person’s dream.)
I am sure people wonder, when they hear of a long-invalided person, why the person can’t die when he has no more point in living. It’s not a nice situation to be in. And we haven’t even considered those who go into a coma for years and years!
Even when speaking of old classmates or just people one hasn’t sighted for a long time, someone is bound to ask, “Buhay pa ba ’yon?” When will they ask that of us?! When I was recovering from some minor operation, a praying group (who fixes up masses for dead friends) asked me, with all good intentions, I’m sure, whether they could include me in their Mass for the grievously ill! I never forgot nor forgave them for that.
I have some acquaintance with Alzheimer’s and dementia. My mother, then 87, and her sister Paquita, 96, were sitting next to each other at a party. My mother said, “Ang ama ko ay si Remigio Luna.” Upon which Tia Paquita perked up, “Aba, ay ako din!” And they held hands. Those are the cuter moments.
Mercy Fabros remembers her father on Nov. 1, reading the name on the grave of his son, and telling her mother, “Mabuti hindi nakasulat dyan ay ‘Leoncio,’ kasi, kung ganun, ako yung nakalibing.”
And then was flustered when his wife explained, “Leoncio, anak natin ang nakalibing diyan!” Confusing, di ba?
‘Why did you leave me?’
“Another time,” continued Mercy, “it was a younger sibling, 89, who was weeping over his 99-year-old brother.” Why did you leave me?” he noisily upbraided the corpse of his departed kuya. “You promised to take care of me!” Poor guy, he really did expect his almost-centenarian kuya to take care of him!!
“I really feel it’s time to go,” said NVM Gonzalez’s widow, Narita. “Most of my friends are gone. I can hardly see—I can only make out half of your body. I don’t have the muscle coordination to write. I live in my wheelchair. We old people need so much care and family attention.”
Alzheimer’s is kind. It makes us forget bad memories. But it also erases the faces of loved ones. An old man, asked whether he recognized his youngest son who was visiting him, replied politely, “Yes… but not quite.” Heartbreaking.
Sometimes an Alzheimer’s patient’s character changes, to become its polar opposite. Michael Tan’s mother “transformed from gadabout mama to a real homebody who likes to cook and housekeep. We loved the transformation!” he said “So, what I’m afraid of is that sweet little me might just transform into an ogre!”
It’s what some Alzheimer’s patients become. Heiress Analee’s well-bred high-society mom about-faced into a fishwife spouting “the most vulgar and foulest obscenities we never dreamed her capable of!” “That’s not my mother, she’s a stranger,” said Tweetums Gonzalez of her hostile, and very angry, Alzheimer-afflicted mom. “She used to be my partner and my pal.”
Is it Alzheimer’s or senile dementia? one may ask of Eloisa N’s mother-in-law, left in her care for a few days. “I saw her taking a bath by splashing water on herself from the kitchen sink. “So I told her, Ma, ang ganda ng banyo natin, doon na tayo maligo.’”
The old woman glared at her, “Bakit ba ninyo pinagbabawal lahat ng gusto ko!” Then she picked up a plastic stool and flung it out the window and into the street! (Was it because women of that generation had been so terribly repressed that when screws finally loosen the creepies seep out?)
Many adult males today are said to lose their virility early due to high blood pressure drugs. “But not the uncle of a friend,” Mercy said. “I was told he kept watching porno discs and masturbating until a ripe old age.” Another male was so sexually fixated at 88 that he would still “do” his 85-year-old wife—“Everyday!” she complained. And, indeed, every single morning they found the poor old dame exhausted in bed.
On this hopefully cheery note, I rest my case.