Embracing Life

We came home from the Filipino-American New Year’s Ball at 1:30 AM, January 1, 2004, exhilarated by the excitement of welcoming the new year in the company of dear friends we have known for 24 years. I was still revved up and wanted to watch the re-run of the Times Square celebration. He said he was going to bed. He felt very fatigued at the party, could hardly walk back to the car, but gallant as ever, he insisted on getting the car and picking me up at the curb. I climbed into bed half an hour later, and as I dozed I heard him gasp. I can’t believe what was happening. I dialed 911 and started CPR. I couldn’t do it properly on the yielding bed, so I rushed downstairs to wake up my live-in houseman so he can help me bring him down to the floor. But as I pumped his chest I was computing in my mind the elapsed time that he didn’t have a pulse. My trained persona as a doctor knew. But I was saying to myself, he couldn’t be dead. I knelt by his side, unbelieving, numb, I felt detached, like I was watching someone else. I screamed to rouse myself. I asked him is he dead, what the devil did he do that for? I scolded him and then I could cry. The EMS crew arrived and I was like a robot. I just followed what they told me to do. I called my daughter, and in an hour friends started coming, friends we just parted with 2 hours ago. When they took the body we sat around in silence, stunned, and then I remembered we were keeping a bottle of Dom Perignon chilled for special occasions. We popped the cork and drank to Johnny. It was the special occasion.

I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of grief, support and love from friends, family and colleagues. It was not enough to stop after the eulogies and then go deal with this loss privately. His golf buddies held a golf tournament in his memory in the dead of winter. Community organizations dedicated dinners and conferred honors. Many wanted to know if they can give money to a cause he supported, in his memory. People just sent money to me outright and I didn’t know what to do with it. My sister suggested funding a scholarship. His career was related to medical informatics. He was well known in my alumni circle as he was sought for his opinions when our class was evaluating our alumni project for our alma mater, which was computerization. It was an AHA! moment when the idea struck, and it proved to be a perfect fit. I knew exactly how I would do it. In the year when lupus reared its ugly head, in 2001 I walked 60 miles in the Avon 3-day Walk for Breast Cancer and raised $857I by throwing a party on my birthday. Instead of bringing gifts, friends brought treasures for auction, in a Mad Hatter’s party where everyone came in original hats to vie for fun prizes. I would recall my Mad Hatter’s team and throw a big auction fund-raiser party. And we did, and raised $20K to endow the Johnny B. Pellicer Professorial Chair in Medical Informatics in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and we had a blast of a party!

I love life and always had fun as far back as I can remember. Growing up in the Philippines, I spent an idyllic childhood of romps on the beach digging for clams with friends and getting into mischief and receiving punishment as the ringleader. I was adventurous and curious, and even if I got into trouble, the experience always seemed worth it. I loved life before I met Johnny and I loved life when I was with him for 35 years, and I haven’t changed after I lost him. If anything his death taught me to even love every second of life as long as I live. When I saw him across the room for the first time, fireworks burst in air. He gave me an experience I will never forget. He had bad genes. I had a preview of what was going to happen through his identical twin brother’s life who died 3 years earlier, being older in the order of birth. Both had gout, diabetes, hypertension, and then late onset lupus that accelerated the worsening of all conditions leading to complications, in their case, coronary artery disease, kidney damage, and painful neuropathy. During the 3 years of Johnny’s illness I endured with him open- heart coronary bypass graft surgery, lithotripsy, gallbladder laparoscopy, and IV chemotherapy. He wanted to live, and he lived until he died. He succumbed to a second massive coronary when he went on that final sleep. My son wrote in his blog, “ My mother taught me how to live life, but my father showed me that life is worth living. ”

I have many lives. I have my work life practicing medicine, my family life, life with friends, community life, life of personal pursuits and solitude, and I had my life with Johnny. I’m surrounded by loving people with whom I enjoy indulging varied interests, such as golf, mahjong, the theater, dancing, dining, wine, tennis, travel, skiing, karaoke singing, solving world problems, and exchanging scatological and titillating jokes. I laugh loud, and sometimes find myself rolling on the floor.

I’m continuing my life as I lived it before Johnny died. On the year of his death I had the auction fund-raiser and was attending all the community functions held in honor of his memory. I went to Venice during Thanksgiving as that was planned with him before he died, and I discovered I needed respite. It provided me with solitude to find my bearings. On December 24 of that year my mother died. In the first year after his death I went to Antarctica , then I was a principal organizer of our Annual Medical Alumni Conference in South Beach, and after that I went for a retreat in a Zen monastery in Tassajara. This second year of his death, I had a New Years Day open house to gather friends to pray in his memory, then I went to East Africa for a safari, and now I’m chairing the committee to celebrate the centennial of Filipino-American migration with a cultural festival at Atlantic Station in Midtown Atlanta. My life is busy and fulfilling. I’m the Miman of 2 beautiful grandchildren. But there is that part that was my life with Johnny and it’s irreplaceable. I may have another relationship. That will be a new adventure. Life is exciting, it is worth living indeed.