RVC 1967-2010 - Ohana

"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

Walking up the hospital steps a chill of dread traveled up my spine, each step I took felt like I was treading on air, I was physically present, but I wasn’t really there. As I neared the room of my Uncle, the chill turned into a blind and desperate clawing, my whole body was shook by the sensation as I was greeted by the faces of my family who were gathered around the hallway. A moment of confusion came over me, “What was going on?” Thinking I was there to visit my Uncle, I had no clue why everyone was there. My mother came out of his room, and said four words: He has joined Papa.

Those four words sounded foreign to me, how could he have joined Lolo? I wondered, as I entered his room and saw my cousins, his children, whose faces were soaked with tears. The implication of those words hit me: My Uncle was gone.

In that moment it felt like I was propelled back in time 9 years ago. It was December 11, 2001. I was fifteen years old. My sister and I just left school en route for Perpetual Succour Hospital to visit our Grandfather who was battling lung cancer. When we arrived, our family was gathered around the hallway of ICU near room no. 7

I was there when I my Grandfather took his last breath; it was a moment that is seared in my memory forever. A few of us were ushered inside his room, while the rest looked on from the small window. My Grandfather was gasping, I could see his chest rising and falling., I don’t recall the instances in between, all I know was one minute he was breathing, and the next he just stopped, I remember I turned my attention to the box beside his bed (ECG) and I noticed that the lines were flat.

The wailing began. I felt like an audience member in a movie house I watched as my family cried the moment my Grandfather left this Earth. Oddly enough, I did not cry. I was hugging my cousin Tal, and I remember feeling completely numb inside.


I didn’t have a degree in psychology at that time, but I’m now aware that it was the first time I put up my most abused defense mechanisms, 1. Denial and 2. Emotional insulation and apathy.

The day after, I remember waking up dismissing everything as a bad dream. I noticed that nobody was around so I decided to go downstairs. Denial is a funny thing, it keeps your emotions at bay; and protects you from reality only for a certain amount of time. Same goes for being apathetic, not wanting to feel, suppressing the pain, is one exhausting endeavor, we just don’t know it until everything just spills over because you keep bottling it inside. When I was greeted by the sight of my Grandfather’s white casket in the living room, and I saw him inside, it was at that very moment that I was hit by the reality that he was gone, it wasn’t until then that I allowed myself to feel the pain.

When I knelt beside my Uncle’s body, I had no arsenal of defense mechanisms at my disposal to fight back reality. I felt tears sting my eyes as I rested my head beside his; and placed my hand on his chest. When I felt no heart beat, when I noticed that his skin was cold to the touch; all I could think of was: “No, not again”.

"That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking."
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

The next day strangely felt like déjà vu to me, I woke up and made my way downstairs to be greeted by a white casket, The same words echoed in my head: “No, not again”.

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

Recovering from the loss of my Grandfather was hard on us, he was such an amazing presence in our lives. When his candle burned out, we were left to grope in the darkness. Truth be told, we haven’t really recovered from his death, the death of my Uncle seems not only re-opened the wound, it is making it bleed and fester.

In a way, it is a greater loss now that my Uncle is gone. My Grandfather lived till he was old and gray. He witnessed graduations, weddings, and even the christenings of his grandchildren. My uncle has 3 children who have yet to cover those milestones. It seems more painful to me, the thing is, my mother, and her siblings had their Dad with them longer- when his time came, they had shared so much with him already that perhaps even if it was hard, maybe it was a little okay for him to go on his way.

I think of my cousins and feel a painful sensation just thinking about the years ahead. True, they have all of us to be their support system. They have their Mom, Uncles, Aunts, and tons of cousins to cheer them on for every important moment of their life, but in the end you can’t ignore the fact that there is one smiling face missing in the crowd.

"When we truly love, it is never lost. It is only after death that the depth of the bond is truly felt, and our loved one becomes more a part of us than was possible in life."
— Oriental tradition.

I think nobody is really able to fully recover from the death of a loved one, be it their spouse, parent, child, friend, pet or any important presence in their life. Bottom line, you are left to deal with the reality that they are no longer there.

Keeping that in mind, it now becomes our duty to move on. Moving on does not necessarily mean “to forget”, quite the opposite actually. Moving on, means keeping them alive with every thing that we do. Moving on, means making sure that you do every thing in your power to live a life that would make them proud, and prove that they did not die for nothing.

Truth be told, since my Grandfather’s death, closely followed by the death of my beloved dog KC, and now my Uncle Aldy – I can say that I certainly have a long-standing issue with death and bedlam that it leaves in its wake.

I don’t deal with it very well; in fact, it only pushed me to put up so many walls that are technically not healthy, but it is how I protect myself. That is how I cope. However, this recent loss hit me differently, it made me realize that I have to suck it up and do something.

Death is not a reason to give up on life. Death teaches us that life indeed is short, and that we can never tell when it is our time to go. That is why we must strive to make every moment count. We must take care of ourselves, and take care of others, so that when that day comes, we leave with only good thoughts, and not regret. We also leave the one’s we love with good memories that will live on.

Basically it’s all about OHANA, to borrow a quote from Lilo & Stitch: Ohana means family. Family means, nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

It may be hard to recover from the great loss of another member of our family, but in the end we are the only one’s left and we have to help each other as a family to keep his memory alive. Uncle Aldy lives on in all of us, and if we hold on to that, in some way, he lives forever.