Why are you doing this to me, my daughter?

, asked the old woman in a guttural

tone. Today, I am lying on a bed wrapped in a blue linen cloth. I am not supposed to be
here. I mean, how can I be here? How can I be so terribly sick? My body is as frail as the
useless pieces of broken glass and no matter how I try to move with ease, I cant manage
even just to raise one of my fingers. And there she is. The old woman lying on the bed
beside mine. Were both inside a well-ventilated room with apparatuses unknown to me. I
am being attended by my mother and the old woman is accompanied by a her daughter
who I believe to be in her 40s. The daughter convinces the old woman from time to time
that such is the best and only option left to them. Right there, I sensed a sadder story.
More melancholic than my being weak. I closed my eyes.
I woke up. Still in the same room where I was few hours ago. My breathing is still
supported by a hose to a thing almost analogous to a boiling cup of water, funnily it
produced cold temperature. They told me its an oxygen to support the abnormal interval
of my inhalation. Thankfully, I am still alive with the old woman. Were both alive.
Suddenly, a man in blue uniform entered the room. He brought with him a cart full of
injectables. He drew closer to the old woman. With words of assurance, he told the old
woman that itll hurt a little but will be a great help to her speedy recovery. The old
woman groaned as the man injected the medicine. Her daughter was still there, consoling
her hurting mother. Shes Puring. I heard from a sturdy man who was talking to my
mother. Only then I realized that my consciousness was becoming normal again. Shes
my mother and she used to go from a place to another healing all sorts of diseases. A
quack doctor, they say. My mother nodded. I stared at the old woman closing her eyes,
getting her body ready to rest. There were stretches of crease all over her face and it told
so much of her age. She has sunken eyes and pale lips but it was her complexion which
gave me a hint that she once graced her life as a beautiful lady. Her hair is grayed through
the years and her nose is as pointed as mine. I pity her. Not because shes sick and weak
but because shes robbed off her motherly prerogative not to be sent in a hospital but
rather confined in her own bed where she may spend her remaining days in contentment.
But how can she blame her loving children?

She cant understand it. Were doing it for her and she cant be so stubborn this
time, told the daughter who was almost crying to my mother. And right there, I knew
how she and her older brother loved their mother. We cant lose her. Not this time, she
managed to continue. She then narrated the story of their family. They once lived in a far-
flung place of Malungon. Their mother, whom they thought was careless and negligent to
their needs was once a woman of . They needed care but their mother gave them nothing
but candies and lollipops. They needed affection but their mother gave them money.
Those were the things their mother thought they needed. She managed to send us all to
school since my father died just after our ninth sibling was born. She, alone with her
ability to heal, gave us a decent life free from debts. Until five of us were on high
school, continued the daughter.