Ochazuke
See Ya’ Later, Pop
By Mario G Reyes
Monday, Sept. 10, 2007

July  9, 2007, 3:45 in the morning
I am sitting with my mother on the sixth floor of White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights. I hear beeps and low level humming from all sorts of machines. The voices of nurses and doctors echo in the hallway. My father had been admitted to the hospital on an emergency basis the night before.

My mother and niece, Nicole, were already at the hospital when I first arrived. We spent the next three hours in the emergency room, waiting for a room to open up.

My father has cancer. For the past year, my father had been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The family thought my father had beat the cancer when the original tumor shrank. But a few weeks later, my father started experiencing chest pains.

My father, then, underwent a battery of tests, from a MRI to a CAT scan to a multiple of blood tests. What we feared the most had occurred. My father’s original cancer had spread to his chest, and the doctors concluded that the cancer was too far advanced. They told us there was nothing they could do.

My father was dying.

And here he is in the hospital, undergoing a new set of tests. In the dim light, I faintly see my father’s chest rise and fall, exhaling, inhaling. A part of me wishes he would stop breathing so he’d no longer suffer the pain he’d been enduring for a better part of a year. But in the next moment, I hope for a miracle, wishing he’d rise up free from the pain and the cancer.

I wonder if I should start to pray. But what should I pray for? For him to die?

My mother sits in a chair next to his bed, trying to get a few winks. Her strength amazes and confounds me. This past year has been the hardest on my mother. She attended to my father 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The only positive effect from this experience is that my father and I had gotten closer as father and son and even maybe as friends. My father and I had never had a “Brady Bunch” sort of relationship. But during these past few years, an unspoken understanding evolved between us as I watched my father transform from a strong, stubborn, proud man into a ghost of his former self. Sure, he was still stubborn and proud but the cancer, the chemotherapy and radiation had withered away his physical body.

As my father sleeps in the hospital bed, I gaze at his face. It is a face at peace, not one in pain. I look away for a few seconds and turn back to find him staring up at me.

“Hi pops,” I say.

He smiles, closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

A few hours later, a new nurse comes in to take my dad’s vital statistics. The room begins to glow in soft amber light. A new day is breaking. The nurse greets my mother with a smile and a “good morning.”

My father wakes up around 5:30 or 6 a.m. He looks around. I realize he is looking for his wife, my mother. I point towards the chair my mother is sleeping in. He focuses on her, satisfied. He goes back to sleep.

All sorts of emotions sweep through me. I fight to remain in control. I don’t want to let my mother or siblings see me break down because as the oldest child, I’d always been in control. Damn, I think, right now I hate being the oldest.

I look to Nicole, my niece, as my rock. She inspires me to remain in control. If she only knew how much I am depending on her.

July 10, 2007
On the second night of my father’s hospital stay, something memorable happens. My father wakes up from his sleep. I walk over to his bedside. He asks for his wife. I tell him I had sent mom home to get some rest so that she could return refreshed in the morning.

I ask him if he is in any pain. He shakes his head.

I ask him if he knows who I am. He smiles. “You are my son,” he says.

I laugh. Then I ask him, “Which one?”

He replies, “The one who loves me.”

I smile. “That’s right, pop,” I say, softly.

My father smiles. Then he closes his eyes and dozes off.

Raul G. Reyes passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of Aug. 17, 2007. He was four months shy of his 80th birthday.

My family and I deeply appreciate the compassionate care given by the White Memorial Hospital staff and Cancer Center. They patiently guided us through this ordeal, trying to make our father’s stay and our decision-making process as painless as possible.

I would also like to thank the many Rafu readers and community friends who have sent their kind words of sympathy. During this time, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for the people I call friends. They have demonstrated to me their caring and compassion, not only for myself but to my entire family. For this, I am deeply grateful.
 
Mucho arigato!

________________

Mario G. Reyes is photo editor for The Rafu Shimpo. He can be reached at mreyes@rafu.com. Ochazuke is a staff-written column. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.