passing on

i saw the face of death almost everyday in medical clerkship. every time the word "mayday" was yelled across the medicine ward of the clinical hospital, the smell of death lingered incessantly until the senior medical resident called the effort to revive the half-dead patient over. from minutes to an hour or so, we believed it was our christian duty to spare no time and expense to bring back those who nature are calling back into its bosom. it was our professional duty too that we do everything physiologically possible to see to it that death does not become necessary all the time.

but in almost half of these cases, death was indeed necessary. either due to longstanding conditions that have taken their toll on their non-superhuman bodies or to sudden turns of fate like a stabbing or a gunshot, life ends and we all move on. the ritual of pumping their chests to stimulate renewed heart activity is so ingrained in my memory that i can do it anytime even after 10 years without practice. whenever i did cardiac pumping, i always looked at the patient's eyes in an attempt to peek into what was going on deep inside them. most of the time i found the pain in their faces that was probably brought about by the failure of the various systems in their body. unlike other people, however, i do not find poetry in their eyes as they struggle for their own survival. when i had to do CPR on my own father, i sensed the peace and closure that he had longed for. his five years of sufferings were probably enough.

these days, i hear of people passing on more frequently than i did several years ago. maybe because i have reached an age when the people i knew when i was growing up are reaching their "life-expectancy" limits. the cycle is being completed. i would learn that my godfather from this place has died or my mother's friend from that place has also passed on. my aunt from colorado, my uncles from bicol and laguna, even my very first friend in our neighborhood in sariaya has fallen victim to a violent end.

i myself do not expect to live forever. i become more conscious of my own mortality every time i hear about people i know passing on. my own bout with a life-threatening condition 11 years ago always reminds me of my own vulnerability. every potential infection, every fever that i have, every joint pain, every bruise are all warning signs that are important markers for my own survival. nothing can be left to chance. my immune system is not as tough as my classmates in med school nor my co-residents in rehab. so i had more precautionary measures than everybody else whenever one or more of our patients are suspected to have some kind of infection.

but death is hard to cheat. it is a lingering presence as we drive at 90 mph in the freeway. it is our constant companion every time we fly even on the safest planes. it is always a threat whenever we let ourselves go under the knife even in the most benign of procedures.

and most of the time we escape death and move on. only to move ever closer the the thing we have always dreaded. closer and closer.