It was a very busy night for me and my family when my grand mother was being taken cared of in the Intensive Care Unit.. I remembered vividly how her body shakes as she fought to take oxygen in her lungs and hardly grasp the fresh air within the four walls of the magic gadget we call .. respirator… I thought, she’ll be fine…

I remembered the last time I saw her… I knew she was healthy and strong, a woman who can still run after you if you get a peso off her wallet… whenever she wants to go places, I’m the only grand daughter she can called on and bring her bag and listen to all her stories.. though I should have told her she could have brought a cassette tape to play it instead,,, yet I love all her stories.

My mom broke the news, I attended the service in the early Sunday mass, and my mom told me that my grand mother was rushed to the hospital.. suffering from pneumonia… she also had diabetes then… Every night, we spent time with her.. yes in the ICU.. took rounds.. I was only 19 years old back then.. I had my mom bring my socks because I can feel the chills and coldness of being silent amidst the physical and emotional pain of sickness.. that you cannot talk to your loved ones.. may it be a hope of telling them goodbye or wait for me and I’ll be fine..

I talked to her.. so many times.. we prayed a lot… yet.. the only response I heard was the air coming in and out of the respirator…the sounds terrified me.. what if it stopped?

That was Saturday…my cousins and I were throwing juicy fruit wrappers against each other, when in between the curtains of the ICU, I saw the nurse was applying CPR on a weak body which I can always recognize…

yes, my lola wanted to go home…

It was like I was in a trance.. . I called my cousin, kuya Robert who was then sitting beside the nursery room fighting to not to sleep ,, I just told him that there were doctors coming in and out of the room.. I felt the blow of numbness… but never told him that they were already applying CPR. I went to the lobby of the hospital where my parents and relatives were, and told them that the doctors need to talk to them.. at that moment, I was the only one who by TRUTH hits SADNESS.. , the truth that her battle is almost over.. soon over..

In between the curtains of the ICU.. the tears are forming in my heart.. we called her Epang.. our folks’ shortcut of Josefa… a very strong woman.. she would just knock our doors in the morning, and would say "hooooy! gising na aba.. tanghali na!" we live in Pasig, and she stayed in our old house in Marikina.. she would just walk, from the old "santos" house to our very small home in Dela Paz.. it was annoying but i miss it… she would just walk and check up on us.. she would just take a cup of coffee and go home.. .

We cannot say how life can treat us.. sometimes life can just blow us in the most incomprehensible moment of a docile hour.. in between those curtains… I saw the line between life and death.., I recall how we spent time together on late Sunday evenings.. our sessions of the five mysteries of the rosary.. I love my lola…. she died in the arms of lolo, my lolo has been waiting for her in heaven…and I know that he was there all along.. in my grandmother’s combat of life and death..

— I just miss her, I just want to budge the sadness and longing through writing

One day, I will meet her again.. in the depths of eternity and in the ageless fragrance of rosebuds found in a place we call "Heaven"