Today, my family celebrates our mother's 10th death anniversary. I have always wished I would one day dream about her but I never did since her death. I believe she is really at peace with Jesus now.
Mama stayed with me from April, 1996 until the day she died. My sisters and I asked her to come over to Manila so she could have a thorough check-up because she was always complaining of gas pains and hyperacidity. It was then that she was diagnosed to be suffering from cancer of the ovary and that the disease had already spread to her other organs.
She was in and out of St. Luke's hospital starting May, 1996 because water had started to invade her lungs and liver.
On Nov. 6, after our 1st Wednesday mass in the evening, I had to request for an ambulance to bring her to the hospital. She was getting very weak. I used to read to her the psalms especially when I'd see that she was in pain. In the Poem of the Man-God, Jesus was shown reciting the psalms while St. Joseph lay dying on his death bed. I also made it a point to have the rosary tape turned on the cassette every time so that she could listen and pray with it.
Then about 4 or 5 days before she died, she started seeing visions of the suffering Christ, of Our Lady (Miraculous Medal and Mater Dolorosa), of God the Father. I knew she had started to hallucinate. Each time she was at this state, I would cover her eyes with my palm to find out if she would blink. She never did and it did not seem to disturb her either. She continued seeing the visions even when my palm was covering her eyes. I would ask her to describe what she saw. Always it was the crucified Christ, bowed down with thorns on His head (half body only) and hands outstretched but without the cross.
"He does not look at me.." she'd say. At another time, she saw Jesus sleeping on his side with his right arm underneath his head. At another time, I heard her uttering: "Divino Nostro" and she was staring blankly ahead of her. Again, once I saw her straightened up in her bed and positioned her arms and hands like the image of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and kept pointing with her lips at something I could not see.
"Si Ina (Our Lady). Miraculous Medal."
One day I asked her who it was she was seeing again. "Si Ama (the Father)." Then she started praying, entreating earnestly: "Ama, patawad, patawad" (Father, forgive, forgive...).
Once I asked her to describe Jesus. She said "Pogi" (handsome). Then I asked her to say hello to Jesus for me and she smiled.
Only once did she spoke about my father and my aunt (her sister who was a nun) being there with her, keeping her company but never saying anything to her. She said they were just there quietly keeping watch over her. I guessed they were probably praying for her.
On Tuesday night, Nov. 12, she was really in agony. But at the same time, I surmised, she was getting a glimpse of what seems to be heaven. At one point she exclaimed: "Ang ganda!" (It's beautiful!)"
"What is it?" I asked. "Heaven". What ever it was, the experience lasted only for a few seconds, because she was in agony again. I believed she was experiencing her purgatory and she was eagerly longing for heaven that was why her suffering was more intense in that respect.
At one point she wanted to remove the intravenous connections and I asked my nephew who was with me to help me hold her down to prevent her from grabbing the tubes. When she saw the nurse on the act of replacing the bottle of dextrose, she was motioning for her not to do so anymore. "Ang tagal naman.. (It's taking too long!)" she kept saying and appeared very impatient.
When I heard her saying this, I started to pray the psalms again and some prayer of surrender and I made sure the rosary tape was loud enough for her to listen to. I knew that at that moment she was being severely tempted by the evil one and I had to cast out every evil spirit around her.
After being in agony for so long she fell asleep. She never woke up again. At 4:00 in the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 13, she finally expired. She died on a Wednesday, the day of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, whose habit she wore because she had been its devotee for the past so many years.
Death should never become a fearful reality for us. But I believe that no matter how spiritual a person has become, one will always feel some amount of apprehensions thinking about it. Somehow, separation from anything we love always causes pain. That includes our love for our earthly life. So I guess it is really necessary for us to ask God for the grace of detachment, the grace that will deprive us of our affection for the temporal goods of this earth and our affection for this earhtly life.
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