Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Maxey: Of life and death
By Ram Maxey
Bar None
MY DOCTOR had told me to see him one week after getting out of the hospital where I had been confined with pneumonia. I did. With his trusty stethoscope he made me inhale and exhale deeply as he listened to what my lungs had to say. Then with a grin he said: "I could clearly hear the air rushing in and out of your lungs. You're okay. You will live to be a hundred.
Oh? So, who wants to live to be a hundred? Not I, if by then I would need a cane to help keep me steady as I totter from point A to point B. Or if I would be seeing things as if through a fog. Not if I would need a hearing aid, or with trembling hand spill soup from my spoon. Or forget to zip up pants after leaving a urinal. Worse still if I forget to zip DOWN before that (ngeeehhh).
But if at age 100 I can still walk a straight line, hear a Sinatra-wannabe belt out "My Way" in a videoke bar as I pass by outside, or if I can still appreciate a pair of shapely legs of a mini-skirted lady across the street from me, why then, as that sportswear commercial blurts out on TV, Let's Get It On! No kidding.
I don't remember anyone in the family having lived to be a hundred, but I'll give you a clue. Papa himself died before he got to be 75. Three sisters (former Miss Davao Lucille, Margaret, Florence and a brother, Fred, passed away in their mid-90s. At the time of their passing they were lucid of mind, quick to laughter and gave no inkling whatsoever that their time was up when they died -- of old age. Just like that. No lingering illness.
But there were exceptions. Our eldest brother, John, was a physical culture buff and a star athlete in the University of the Philippines (baseball, boxing) in the late 1920s. When he was struck down with tuberculosis (from over-exertion perhaps), Papa sent him to live in a tent in the Arizona desert, hoping that the dry desert air and spartan living would nurse him back to health. In the early days TB was a scourge and medical science was still groping for sure cures to various human ailments. John succumbed to TB in 1930 at age 24.
Two other siblings, Helen and James, died of children's ailments when they were still in their infancy. And then there was Charles John, the hunter of wild boars (baboy damo) and wild chickens (labuyo) in the wilds of what is now General Santos City, circa '50s-'60s. An inveterate smoker, he was diagnosed with cancer of the right lung which a surgeon in Manila removed, gave him cobalt treatment and said he had one year to live. Not quite. Ten months after coming home to hunt wild game "whose time had come" as he used to say in jest, Charles died, still a bachelor at age 29.
I better end this here before my favorite nephew, George, chides me again with, "Si Uncle naman, lagi nalang..." Yeah, obviously he likes to smoke.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (July 26, 2006 issue)
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