Aunt Ste

Far away in a lonely hospital room, an old lady is left alone… sick and lonely. The nurse assigned to her has just checked her vital signs and the nurse-aide has just given her the sponge bath. Every morning for three months she asked if someone has dropped by for a visit while she was asleep,
and each day she was told, “No one, ma’am. Anyway, should you need anything just press the buzzer.”

January 12, 2009, Chuchi, a childhood friend (a neighbor and distant relative) asked me if I wanted to go with her to Bacolod City to visit her sick Auntie Estefania whom we all thought was in the US mainland as her other sister was in Guam. Auntie Ste, as we call her, is a 71-year old spinster, who’s been abroad since 1964. She’s an elder sister of her mother who was the youngest of the three. Among the three sisters, she was the most stringent and hard to please as much as she had an inexplicable fear for ‘germs.’ When we were children, she will never allow us to come near the dining table unless we had washed our faces along with our hands and arms with soap and water; pulled back our hair with a hairclip or changed our play clothes into clean ones. We may have rebelled against her too but because we wanted to be a pretty ‘dalaga’ like her – we did whatever she required.

Aunt Ste stayed in the United States for 45 years but she came home only twice for almost a month and once for just three days because she had to go to her friend’s place yet in Negros Occidental. Those visits were, according to her, so necessary – the first homecoming was when their mother, Lola Soling died; the second was when their father, Lolo Pelay passed away too. The shortest visit was, she said, ‘just dropping by to say hello to the folks.’ All her other vacations were spent seeing places all over the world with friends.

We went to Bacolod City to see Aunt Ste. She had been in the hospital since before Christmas but she’s sometimes put under sedation. Her companion was a cousin of her best friend in the US who died a year earlier. We found out that she has been in that city for over a year already, staying in her friend’s house whose son, Andrei, was her godson. It was learned further that she had actually been spending for Andrei’s schooling, board and lodging, and other needs while their mother took care of the needs of the other three siblings. In the US, Aunt Ste was sharing her house with their mother who was also a nurse and a former classmate.  Soon, Chuchi asked where Andrei was. We were told that he is presently living in a town near Negros Oriental and has not come yet to visit his maninay because his wife has no companion at home. Does he work? “Yes, he’s a messenger in the office of one cargo forwarder. He didn’t make good in school, you know. In fact, Ste was frustrated with him.” I saw the pained expression on Chuchi‘s face when these were told to us because they being the nieces, have to work their way through college since they lost both their parents while this godson enjoyed everything but has failed her aunt.

That was the last time I saw Aunt Ste alive. I met Chuchi again last week and she told me that her Auntie died due to her breast cancer two months after our visit. She died far away, alone and, hopefully, not in pain.
Why am I writing this? Oh, for two reasons that Chuchi and I must have overlooked – one is the beauty of pure friendship that expected no returns from the other; the second is the virtue of gratitude that we didn’t find at all from the main recipient of the other’s benevolence.

Anyway, the dead tell no tales… so will Aunt Ste remain silent forever.