Remembering the loss

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

HALLOWEEN and All Souls’ Day are often associated with supernatural phenomenon and other things that cannot be explained by science.

And every time All Souls’ Day comes, I can’t help but remember the experience I had in 1991 while I was still a second year Nursing student. My boyfriend died of internal hemorrhage from a ruptured aneurysm.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

It was Sunday evening. We were supposed to have dinner by 7:00 p.m. at my cousin’s house. But he never arrived at the agreed time. Later, his boardmate informed me he was vomiting hard and sweating profusely. When I went to their boarding house, he was lying in bed and when he saw me, he said “I think I would die.”

We panicked and immediately brought him to the hospital. At the emergency room, he got unconscious. The doctors performed electroencephalogram (EEG), a test used to measure brain electrical activity. The EEG showed he had internal hemorrhage and may never wake up. Still, he was brought to the intensive care unit (ICU) hoping he would get better.

While he was struggling inside the ICU with his parents around, I was waiting outside praying to God that he would be okay. Suddenly, I saw a black butterfly on the wall. I then cried thinking he might be dead, as I often heard from elder relatives that when you see a black butterfly, someone dies. Then his mother went out of the ICU and embraced me.

“He’s gone,” she said.

I don’t know what to say and feel at that time. I asked God how could He take such a young man who still has so many dreams to fulfill. But it was His will that his life ends there.

While mourning inside my room at the boarding house the night he died, I asked him why he left me. I silently begged him to show up so we could talk. I am a little coward when it comes to ghosts and spirits but I tried to be brave in case he would show up. But he didn’t. Instead, I smell a sweet scent of flowers and felt a cold hand caressing my shoulders and arms. I felt he embraced me. Then I felt somebody with a cold lips kissed my cheeks. I can’t help but cry. At that time, all I wanted was to see him.

Later in my sleep, I dreamed we were talking while biking together. It seems he was so alive.

He died on December 19. A few days after he was buried, I went to my hometown in Maramag, Bukidnon to spend my Christmas vacation and hopefully forget the sad experience.

At home, we usually do caroling within the neighborhood during Christmas. And even if I was still mourning for his loss, I went with my family and friends for caroling.

One night when we were about to go home after caroling, almost all dogs in the neighborhood were staring and howling at us as if they have seen someone not normal. I told them, “He is here with us.”

A few months after he passed away, I tried to live a normal life and went on with my studies though oftentimes, I can still feel his presence every time I called his name.

Then I graduated Nursing and passed the board exam, got married and have a family of my own.

After almost 20 years, I can still remember the “cold embrace” he gave the night he died, which I know was his way of consoling me. And today, all I can offer is prayers for his soul to rest as I continue to live my life.