for my nona

I am sitting in the waiting room, watching as my uncle picks up the phone outside the door of the ICU and says “Hi, for Tongson please” into the receiver, a phrase I’ve heard uttered nearly dozens of times today.

This hospital has become my home this past week, but not in the same way I imagine it has for my nona. I’m merely a visitor here, who has become all too familiar with the unfeeling florescent lighting, the confusing, narrow hallways, and its mysterious and unsettling beeping noises that will surely haunt my sleep.

For my grandmother, this is where she will find her eternal rest. It’s where she felt the poke and prod of needles, of nurses and doctors, of our hands carding through her hair, of tears falling on her bedside.

Grief has seemed to consume me this latter half of 2024, as I bade goodbye to my papa in September and now sit here, already having said goodbyes to my nona. It’s a feeling I’ve never felt with such depth before, the way it consumes my body whole. I think a lot about what books and people say, how your body memorizes every emotion and moment like memory foam. I’m hyperaware of how I fully shake with every sob. My hands shake when I hold her hand. The other night, in the shower, I clutched myself, doubled-over, with the water pouring over me and my mouth opened in something between a silent scream and sob. It was cathartic.

It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions. I had a beautiful day with my Nona the day before her hospitalization, and it’s one I’ll look back on so fondly. I came outside and saw Marie picking persimmon from our tree in the backyard. Nona sat there, on the grey steps, smiling and helping pick off the branches and leaves. I asked if I could try. I just wanted to spend more time with Marie and Nona. I picked the fruit, carefully aiming and maneuvering the big stick to try and perfectly grab it. Nona watched as I did so, making her comments like “Wow! That’s a big one” and “You’re getting good at it, huh?”

I would run back and show her the fruit I picked. She showed me a funny one, it kind of looked a bit like a butt, and wiped it on her sleeve. She told me, “This one’s good luck.” It’s still sitting on her dresser at home. It didn’t do a whole lot of good here, but I think it will in heaven.

In my moments of grief, when I feel it all-enveloping and surrounding, I think a lot about how I never thought I could feel something so painful or do something so hard. It was already hard enough, with losing my papa in September, but I had the (mis)fortune of not being there in the hospital. I merely received the call, felt my body go numb, and sat with the news.

Here, I watched my nona lose her spark and, frankly, her will to live over the week. She underwent endless blood tests and uncomfortable examinations. I now know all these different breathing devices and systems. Overly complicated names for antibiotics. How to read her monitor so I could tap my mom when I got concerned.

I’m grateful to have my family by my side during these times. In a way, I feel like a kid again, the way I’m the youngest in the room next to all my aunts and uncles and cousins. Just last night, my cousins and I were sat cross legged in the living room, plotting celebrity men on a graph where the x axis was “boy” to “man” and the y “hot” to “pretty”. It was exactly some stupid shit we would’ve done 15 years ago.

I told my cousin that it was nice, despite the circumstances, to have sat there and talk like that. It felt like old times. She agreed.

Even the ICU waiting room, a room that is cold and unfeeling and most definitely not decorated to be comforting, was brought to life by the giggles and banter of my family members. In those moments, as we all talked, I quickly realized where I got my humor from, how all of my family members love to quip and poke and prod and tease and joke, even in such a sad time. It felt like, even with all these hospital fluorescents, our room was glowing, warm with all the laughter.

I’m also grateful that they can all grieve together. My mom gets to be with her siblings and pray over my nona’s hospital bed. They support her in a way I cannot. She was my nona, but she was my mama’s mama, and that’s a connection so special and sacred. A mother’s love for her children.

I’ve lived with my nona for all my life up until college. While my mom was away in San Diego working long shifts at the hospital, my grandparents fed me, brought me to and from school, and essentially functioned as my parents. Reflecting on it, I’m so lucky to have lived with them for 17 years, to have had a relationship like that with my nona.

I was trying to find videos and photos of her I had taken over the years, anything to keep her close to me so I don’t forget what her voice sounded like. In it, I found a series of voicemails she had sent to me. Most of them were from when I was in high school, when my lolo and her would pick me up. Embarrassingly, the six voicemails I had from her from that time were her telling me that they were there waiting for me and I was taking a while. I feel a pang of regret at it, I probably should’ve been more timely. But also, I think that silly passive aggressive singsong lilt she has in her voice when she says “Camille~, we’ve been waaaiting, okay? Come out soon~!” really captures my nona well.

We all said our goodbyes over the span of these couple of days. I’ve never really thought of what to say, I didn’t want to plan a goodbye out of fear of sounding ingenuine or too stiff in the moment. There, holding my nona’s hand, it spilled out of me, raw and unpretty and unpracticed. You raised me, I told her. You taught me how to blow bubbles from chewing gum and how to whistle. You taught me to read. I work hard for you, I work hard because of you. I love learning because of you. I got to where I am because of you.

My nona taught me how to read when I was two, and in particular, I really loved this book she read me. It’s titled “Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch. There’s a part that repeats throughout the book, and my nona sang it to me when she read it.

“I love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”

In the end of the book, the once-baby holds his now elderly mother and rocks her, singing, “I love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be.”

One of my nona’s favorite stories to tell is that when I was a kid, after we finished reading the book, I looked at my nona and sang, “I love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my nona you’ll be.”

There, as I said goodbye to my nona in the ICU, I sang to her, through tears, the very same lullaby.

I don’t think I know where to go from here, how to navigate a world and a life without my nona. She won’t ever get to see me get married, or meet her eventual great grandkids. There are so many funny dog videos I want to show her, Jeopardy episodes I want to watch, milestones I want her there for. Every time I think I’m done crying, another flood hits me and I’m sobbing to myself all over again, thinking of how much I love her.

I’ve tried convincing myself that death is akin to someone just going away for a really long time. Like they’re in another room, and they’ve having a great time with all the other people who have gone away for a really long time. In this room is a one-way mirror, and I’m on the other side. I’m staring and inspecting and gazing and I see just myself, but if I look long enough and hard enough, I can kind of see her. I see her in my smile and in my eyes and the way I laugh. And if I look in just a little closer, I can see her looking back at me, smiling.

Goodbye Nona, I love you so, so much. I can’t wait to tell stories about you to my grandchildren. I can’t wait to cook all the recipes you taught me. I can’t wait to wear all the clothes you bought for me. You asked me next time I came home to bring my jacket, the one you sewed for me, because you saw some cool designs when you were away in the Philippines and you wanted to fix my jacket to look like them. I will always cherish the time we spent together, how you spent so much of your time taking care of me and raising me. How you put up with my silly antics and my septum ring and tattoos and my cussing. Please come and visit, just to say hi to me and give me some more pointers and wisdom. Come visit Snickers, give him some pets, and when it’s his time, too, you can get full custody of him.

I hope you can rest now, and be with your siblings and your parents. I know you missed them so much. Throw a party and laugh with them and tell them about all the adventures you’ve been on, and we’ll be okay down here. It’ll be hard at first, but life will go on. And I will look at that one-way mirror again, and look and look and look, and I’ll smile and wave, because I know you’re looking back at me.

Written with all the love I can possibly muster,

Cami

My Nona passed away at 4:30PM on December 6, 2024. She was able to be discharged from the hospital that morning and brought home where she peacefully passed surrounded by her loved ones and family.