My COVID19 lockdown story: Video-calling to say goodbye to my dying father
LONDON -- Just as the global pandemic is forcing a new normal in the way we work, do business, socialise and travel, so too for death and bereavement. When I started covering the pandemic, I did not envision I would be put in the same place with the people I interviewed, where I would have to say goodbye to my dearest father thru a video call.
On the last week of May, we decided as a family to bring back my octogenarian dad to the hospital. His health rapidly deteriorated during the lockdown. His wish was to go back to our home in Bicol. Was it a premonition that he had given up the fight and home was his euphemism for death? We went against his request because he was too frail to travel. It was a painstaking last journey to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center so that his doctors for many years could assess and attend to him again.
Later in his life, when he read and heard about the dispute in the West Philippines Sea, he would talk about his naval days in his mid-20s, when they patrolled the seas of Palawan, Guam, Vietnam and many other areas. He had a romantic affinity with Japan.
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