I was at the dining table when my father walked passed. He was on his way out somewhere. I remember thinking how he and my mother, and my uncles and aunts, looked the same as they had always looked, well, at least, to me. They didn’t seem to age.

Until they got sick. And then they got old. Very fast.

On December 23rd of that year, I was on my way out when my dad came up to me, complaining that his left hand didn’t want to do what he wanted. I immediately googled the symptoms of a heart attack. I read out the list to him and he answered no to each one. I kissed him, assured him he was fine, then left.

The next morning, my mother said that she thought my dad was having a stroke. Apparently, he had confessed his bank accounts to her that evening. “Why didn’t you take him to the hospital,” I demanded. “I was busy taking down the details of his accounts.” My mother, ever the pragmatist.

When my father woke up, he saw me hovering over him.

“Why are you dressed up, Gai? Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m taking you to the hospital., Dad.”

“Okay,” he replied.

Just like that. When my dad doesn’t put up a fight about going to the hospital then I know something’s wrong.

So it was that we spent Christmas Eve 2014 with my dad at the hospital. My dad had his second major stroke.

After that, he still recovered enough to drive a car. Although it would take him about two hours to get to some place that was 30 minutes away because he kept getting lost. And for someone who had never had an accident, he would drive over curbs or scrape a bumper.

It took another stroke before he finally surrendered his car keys.

Strokes are like earthquakes that go off in the brain. Afterwards, there are tremors and aftershocks, jolts of electricity going off, and one is never the same.

My father lost a lot of weight and aged fast. Now, I no longer recognise him. He seems a different man.

I came back to Manila from Siargao a few weeks ago to renew my US visa. He was sleeping when I came into his room, so I climbed into bed beside him and hugged him. He woke up.

“Gai, I feel irrelevant.”

“Why is that, Dad?”

“Nobody talks to me anymore. They can’t understand me.”

The last strokes have left my dad with slurred speech. His left side has also been severely compromised. He can barely move his left arm, and he drags his left leg.

Now, he sleeps a lot because he is bored. All of us are going about our lives and he can’t do anything because of his physical limitations.

So I was supposed to return to Siargao right after my US visa was renewed, which took faster than I thought, but I decided to put my life in Siargao on hold to spend more time with my parents.

I take my dad to his physical therapy sessions, even when he doesn’t want to go. We go out for steak and ice cream, even if he isn’t supposed to have ice cream. We listen to a lot of old music, and sing along loudly even if we cannot sing. Our favourite is Louie Armstrong. But we also listen to Joni James, Bobby Darrin, Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, George Benson…

Recently, my mom had cataract surgery that didn’t go very well, and I had to alternate my time between the both of them.

The good thing about spending time with the folks is that I’ve learned a lot about them. About what it was like for them growing up. What they struggled with at work. It’s strange seeing their lives as real people. They’ve always been my parents. They had a handle on everything. Seeing things from their perspective stirred up the Catholic guilt in me, from giving them so much shit while I was growing up.

My dad hasn’t lost his sense of humour. In fact, it’s gone on overdrive. We can never get a straight answer out of him and he turns everything into a joke.

He and his brothers and sisters were always quick to laugh but I think, among all nine of them, he was the funniest. And since I/ve been his understudy since birth, I know all his jokes by heart. Sometimes I’ll throw back one of his own jokes that I remember from childhood, and he is genuinely surprised then lets out a loud laugh. I love it when he laughs that way because he always says, “I’m so happy!”

My mom has remained strong. She is very active and is always very busy. She is everything that I am not. I am really more my father’s daughter.

Last Sunday, as I was watching my dad hobble along with his cane, my mother assisting him, i never thought would come to this. they were supposed to be eternal. I wasn’t even supposed to make it past 25. Yt now here we are. All struggling as our bodies slowly give out from under us.