Go, Dana, go!

By Emmanuelle

The angels must have prayed hard, harder each of the second and third times Dana went comatose. They must have moved heaven. For Dana to have survived being comatose was a miracle in itself. To have survived two more of the same is beyond miracle.

Jovi and her family always expected the worst each time Dana goes through these bouts. How could they even begin to expect the best? When the doctors and the nurses and the medical technicians and all the hospital staff wear a common look of helplessness and resignation and in the best hospitals of US of A yet?

Yet, Dana bounced back upon touchdown at the bottom of the void.

And so she continued to live with her mother when her siblings have long declared their independence. Mother took care of the daughter and daughter took care of the mother. So remarkably well, in fact, one wondered who was caring for whom and who was being cared of by whom. Even when Jovi married for the second time, and Dana found a boyfriend of her own, the girls remained housemates, and the very best of friends.

Dana continued too to make the hospital her second home, not only when she had the bouts with her disease, but also when she was in remission. First, she was a volunteer, then she became a regular employee. She preferred to work in rehabilitation, particularly with the children who were confined longer than usual in the wards.

And it was work that was not work at all. For Dana, taking care of these children is as delightfully near as she can be with having children of her own. She will have none. Lupus had defined the terrible parameters of her existence. She will have none beyond this.

It was when she was thirty when she decided to try to be independent, just for a little while. When Jovi and her siblings decided to go home to the Philippines to give their father a treat of all of them together for once, Dana asked for permission to visit the mainland with her boyfriend. She will come home to Hawaii almost the same time as Jovi. And that would be within a month or less.

Jovi was in the Philippines for a week when, one night, she received a call from Dana’s boyfriend. They were in San Francisco, California. Specifically, they were in the hospital. Dana had another episode.

Jovi prepared to leave the hometown for Manila by dawn to secure a plane ticket to San Francisco. Before dawn, the boyfriend called the second time. Dana was comatose. A few moments later, he called again. Dana had gone.

The family saw that lupus was a most painful, most dreadful disease, but to them Dana rarely complained. That same night before Dana died, Jovi shook her husband Raf awake. He had dozed off while she was packing for her flight to Dana’s side. Dana’s stepfather was murmuring: go, Dana, go.

Raf related his dream after they learned Dana had gone. In the dream, Dana was being told she was dying. And her reply was the same, through her swollen lips and swollen self: “I know I am dying, but who will take care of Mama?”

And in his dream, Raf, who had come to love Dana as much as Jovi loved her, whispered: “Don’t worry, my child, I will. Go, Dana, go! “

And Dana did.

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