AT THE STOA

As a child, the fondest memory I have of my mother was when I was about eight or nine years old. She took me to her workplace one day, and we passed by a tree that was overgrown with bougainvilla vines in full bloom. The wind picked up, and the flowers were carried by the wind, and they started to dance around the air before falling to the ground. I stopped, mesmerized, and looked up at the sky. She let me watch the flowers fall, and I looked at her, standing tall amidst all the flowers dancing through the air. After a few moments, she held her hand out and we continued to walk, careful not to step on the flowers that are now on the ground. As a teenager and a high schooler, I was her big problem. My sister was always responsible and was a good child - me, not so much. I would come home late from a friend's house where we would play the guitar or read magazines until 11:00 PM, and she would get angry at my hours. That continued on to college, but she still sent me to school, pro...

It started about seven years ago, when my mother felt a lump in her armpit. Maybe even before then. Of course, her being who she is, it wasn't until five years later until she told us, when she felt another lump on her right breast. She didn't tell us that, either. She is who she is, meaning, she considered pain more of a nuisance rather than anything else. That's why when her arm started developing lymphedema, she still continued doing everyday things for a long time. It developed gradually, over the course of three years - where it has now become more than a nuisance, but earlier, when it became more and more of a cause for worry, she went to see a clinic in Baguio City, the head doctor of whom ordered an ultrasound and x-ray. The doctor sat me and my mother down one appointment day and told us what it was. Metastatic breast cancer, maybe stage 3. My mother said she already knew what it was. My mother didn't cry. I don't remember if I did. I just remember...