Sep 14, 2008

On Friendships and Nursing a Sick Professor


My dearest friend, Jo-anne and I went out after our p.m shift duties last August 7. We had our usual life and philosophical updates while hungrily devouring our yang-chows. Little did we know that such uncontrollable encounter unearthed bitterness and deeper equivocal life plans. Specifically, we talked about a “missed” friend and the process that involves our friendship’s demise and a sick professor and her process towards her emotional demise.

Realizations were understood in every sip of my iced tea and her nai-cha. Life’s purposes are made known in every chomp of our fried rice. We realized that we choose to love without being loved, we share out of no incentives at all, and that our actions existed without any thrusts.

On Friendships

When will we say friendships are moribund and dead?
Friendships, I believe, are like humans, stars or other life forms- they die a natural or accidental death. From limited reasons to infinite intentions, from numbness to efforts, all of these could trigger outcomes of a previously planted relationship. One can devote years with reminiscent memories in cultivating a friendship but mistaken selfishness, or in my case- “phrases expressing my unrequited attention” could also destroy an uninsured friendship.

I thought friendships, the most enjoying and satisfying ones, are effortless and blithe. You need not schedule, a dine-out event or acquaintance with your best friends because you always put each other on your priority list. You need not have a substantial reason to commune or meet each other, because you know that substantiality is never a standard of your friendship. That sometimes rules are bended, promises are broken and words are taken back, to heed for a friend in need.

I am a professed unbeliever of the acclaimed assertion: “Absence makes a heart grow fonder.” In fact, absence and distance will only create a large hole in your relationships. The less you know about the changes in your friends, the more you become unfamiliar of them. It doesn’t follow that your friend’s favorite color four years ago are the same as now. So, the “friend” impression you created in your mind during the first years of your friendship will now be a falsity dependent on the degree of change that you are unaware of.


By allowing the natural course of unfamiliarity and selfishness, one allows friendship be naturally eradicated.

On nursing a sick professor

She had never given me soaring remarks in her subject. In fact I was a “nobody” in her class seven years ago; I was once humiliated in her class when she mocked my answers to her essay questions reading them aloud to the class. And up until now, she does not remember me because I am indeed a”nobody” in our class. But my grade in Nursing Anthropology (which is really a mediocre) does not and did not define the extent of my maturity and totality of a person, more so my nursing skills.

We had an opportunity to know her more when we constantly visited her in her house during her recuperation from (I think) her second hospitalization. As I remembered it, we came to her house, only to enjoy her company, her wise remarks on life and practicality, her recurrent and repetitive stories, her sarcasm and her laughter. With a meager amount of money enough for our transportation and a lunch meal and free time; we became available to her-refuting our main purpose of monitoring her recovery, since we never bring any stethoscope and BP cuffs with us.

As to speak, she had her nth time of admission and discharge, Jo-anne and I had not expected her to feel any depression from a woman of her stature and dignity. She was our first nursing professor and the survival and practical skills she taught will never be paid back. So, last August 8 we surprised her with her "halo-halo", "get well soon poster and balloons", and her "bitbit pack". She asked not of these things but "tomorrows without pain" which can be purchased from nowhere.


DR with (from left) Reymund, Gelai, me, Jo-anne, Suzie and Jerry.

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