Who ordered the scrambled brains?

Anytime I spend the night at my parent’s house in Covina, I’m awakened by the chirping of the birds. I guess some would say it’s a pleasent way to wake up but I’ve always found it annoying. Six o’clock is way too early for any creature to be up and yapping. The birds are chirping right now. But that’s not what woke me this morning.

Last weekend I left a family party in Burbank for an hour to visit my grandpa (or lolo in Tagalog) at Glendale Memorial Hospital. His feeding tube had become infected, and complications lead to a blood infection. When I went to visit him, he had already been in the hospital for two weeks.

It was so painful to be in that hospital room, sterile of comfort as much as it was of bacteria. I could only imagine how it made lolo feel. He lay on a modern hospital bed with large plastic walls surrounding it and a cushion that might have doubled as packing foam. The television opposite him was set to local station KTLA, which was running some ridiculous bikini competition. The audio travelled through the room to my grandpa’s bed and forced it’s way out through muddy speakers. Somewhere along the way the audio was overamplified so that it resembled non-stop drive-thru window chatter. Around him were bits and pieces of our finest technology. A machine beeped a slow incessant cry for attention to notify us that there was “AIR IN TUBE”. That sounded horrific, but the nurse’s response was more measured. (”What’s beeping?!” Click, click, click. “OK, I’ll be back to see if it starts beeping again.”) Tubes snaked out from under his blankets, connected to about four or five pouches of nutrients and medicine. At the time he had the room to himself, and the flourescent lighting on his side of the room contrasted with the shadows that enveloped the far corners.

Lolo was dressed in a hospital gown and gripped the side of the bed tightly. He always had a firm grip. Pillows under the right side of his body propped him up; he needed to be rotated every couple hours. His eyes were tightly shut most of the time, and he hardly muttered a sound. When I arrived, his right leg was locked in a 90 degree bend, and my Aunt Cyn was busy massaging his leg. (My aunt lives and works in Highland Park nearby. She travels to the hospital every two hours to tend to my grandpa. I’m so grateful to her for that.) Years of Parkinson’s disease, compounded with his infirm state caused his legs to atrophy, making them prone to cramping. I took over the massaging later. His leg muscles were stiff as boards. My arm muscles burned from the pressure I had to use. At that moment my only goal was to relieve his muscles of pain. That relief would always be short-lived. After only 10 minutes, he would grimmace, mumble, and frantically dig at the back of his thigh with his fingers. We would massage him again.

I was joined in my visit by four of my cousins. Some of us stayed back and observed. I felt compelled to stand by his side. My aunt had to repeatedly prompt him to look at whoever it was that went to stand next to him. Sadly, I don’t know if he recognized me, with my freakin’ hair changing all the time. I talked to lolo as if he did, cracking jokes about how long I’d been in school. “Do you recognize him, dad? Who’s that?” my aunt asked. “Raise your eyebrows once for ‘Michael’, twice for ‘Shaun’.” His eyebrows said nothing. I smiled at him reassuringly, or at least I tried to. Really, I could have cried. I couldn’t stop drawing the contrast between the feeble technology that vainly worked to assist and comfort him, and the intense pain that my lolo was obviously in, and that we were all in standing there watching it all. There is no technology to ease that.

Towards the end of our visit, I held his hand in mine tightly, and he gripped tightly. He fell asleep for a while and my aunt told me that he sleeps better when he knows someone is watching him. I brought his hand to my forehead in the Filipino traditional sign of respect. His grip tightened when it was apparent that we would be leaving him. I pulled my hand out of his grip, and we each said goodbye. Then we left him in the sterile room with KTLA, to go back to the party. Walking back to the car, through those halls, down those steps, unearthed memories of 2001, when my grandma passed away there.

My aunt called this morning, about an hour ago. She had just been notified by the hospital that my lolo had died. I’m numb. And my mind is helplessly drawn to the inescapable feeling that he was neglected in his final years.

Outside, it’s quiet. The birds have all but stopped chirping, at least for today.

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