think

sunday just past, helping rather ineffectually in a long-overdue cleanup of the apartment in the wake of the downstairs office moving to another, larger, place across the street.

text message - my sister: apparently, my mother was thinking of visiting my gone-long-time father in the hospital. news was that he was suffering complications from some unspecified condition and had to be rushed to hospital.

notwithstanding massive inertia (haven't seen the man in over 21 years, the last time he popped into our lives after essentially disappearing years before), decided to go see him anyway.

the middle man in our brood of five was staunchly against visiting, and as it transpired, our eldest had gone the day before. the youngest i persuaded to tag along, recalling a statement our half-grandmother had said during a post-christmas impromptu reunion: go visit him, he's human too.

upon getting to the quirino memorial hospital, turns out that visiting hours were over, and the old guard was quite hard-nosed about not letting us in at all. my twin half-sisters were working themselves into picking a fight when the guards changed shift, and the younger one let us in with an admonition to not stay that long...

on the way to the ward, one of the twins gave us a brief heads-up: it was a tumor in dad's stomach, an endoscopy had been performed and they were awaiting the biopsy results in a week. the doctors were mum about the prognosis; the twins, having lost their mother to cancer two or three years back were prepared to assume the worst. naturally, none of this was to be mentioned to dad.

entered the ward...

after the initial surprise of seeing us start to troop in, he seemed to have gotten over the shock of not recognizing our eldest the day before, and he guessed it was me. we all assembled in the room; my mother, me, my sister, and our youngest brother. we dissembled about the reasons we weren't complete and proceeded to the small talk.

after the "mano po" bit, the youngest decided that he wasn't having any more of this, and left the room.

the bulk of the conversation that followed was borne mostly by my mother and i. my sister's husband was introduced; we answered the obligatory work questions; all the while i was studying my father's face and general demeanor.

he was so much thinner than i'd ever remembered him; but he didn't seem to be in much discomfort; except when the revelations came that we'd known about and had been meeting with his other offspring for the past three years without his knowledge... that surprised him, and he mentioned that he'd been thinking about us and introducing his other family to us -- except that his kids beat him to that punch via the magic of the internet.

he was also quick-witted, reacting to a comment my mother made about his drinking and smoking with a smile; a statement to the effect that it was, after all, "legal suicide" to be drinking a gallon of whiskey a day. he seemed to approve that none of us were smokers or drinkers.

at a certain point, i ventured that it was time to go; in the spirit of the non-disclosure of his likely condition, i said: "get well soon."

he exchanged a high five with my mom and afterwards he shook my hand, saying: "i'll have to, now that you're here."