It’s time to tell what really happened and included the monsters that abandoned us right up until the end. I have waxed lyrical about how my beloved died of AIDS. This helped me avoid the imprints of horror that experience left on my soul.
I focused on the good stuff, the love that we shared, but I denied myself the rage that I felt then, and feel now. I saw the worst of humanity and the best. But none of it came from people that said they loved her. NONE OF IT.
I have protected them for seven years and won’t carry it anymore for monsters so disgusting.
Some pretended help, while making it harder, the others only surfaced after her last breath with their fake grief and hands out to collect money for her demise which they contributed to in a big way.
The Lead Up to The AIDS Diagnosis
I had nursed her for a year, at home. We lived on an isolated farm and had a local hospital (only 20 beds but loads of heart) but it had got to the point where she was so ill they told me they couldn’t help. She had lived through two bouts of frightening pneumonia, her kids (adults) refusing to help in any way, except for one and he added strain by demanding money for his costs at a time when I was scrambling simply to pay for medicine.
The other three monsters, wouldn’t visit. I shouldn’t have expected anything different from monsters who stole money a year before when their mom was in hospital after a motorbike accident. Money meant for her medicine, then they asked for more, and more and more.
I went to the Hospital to take over her care to combat their lies. Such evil. Ignorance couldn’t be blamed, they were smart, but greed and hatred was the motivation.
The HIV Test Was Inconclusive
The local hospital wouldn’t talk about HIV, their Chaplain, another one of the monsters this time entitled, apologized after her death when I ran into him one day. They said it was a touchy subject and couldn’t raise it with us at the time. I looked at the him I was astounded, I had to walk away, I wanted to hit that man so hard for HIS ignorance, as part of a chain that ensured that she died at 47 years old.
They wouldn’t test her anywhere in our local area so we had to travel on a shuttle to the capital, Puerto Princessa, a three hour drive. She couldn’t even sit up, it was an excruciating journey for both. I took a test with her, I had suspected for a while what was happening, and wanted to know my status.
The folks in the lab were super kind, they could see how she was struggling and allowed my beloved to lie down on a hospital bed in their office while we waited for results. Mine were given quickly, a negative result, a huge relief, we had been intimate for years and though I showed no signs it gave me peace. Her results were inconclusive, they pulled another blood sample that had to be sent to Manila, a process that would take over a month.
I found out later, at this point she should have been admitted according to the in place protocol for HIV at the time. But they didn’t and this also helped to push her towards her death. People just don’t care, but I did, she was my soul, my life, my love.
So we went back home to wait for results that never arrived. I was alone looking after this person of my heart. I begged, I mean I really begged her monsters to visit, to speak to her on the phone. Through their silence I saw her realize that they were never going to be there for her, they were simply leeches.
When I couldn’t be by her side the cats would sit around her on the bed, the dogs on the floor quietly keeping her company in her pain. She never once complained, I tried to anticipate her needs, and stay positive but I think we both knew.
I would walk into the bedroom, and hear her tiny voice quietly singing Tagalog songs to herself. I broke over and over and over, but had to be strong. This was a woman who had this amazing, loud and melodious voice, reduced to a whisper by an insidious disease that we weren’t allowed to talk about because of the stigma.
The Final Straw
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave her alone at home, nobody would help. A neighbors husband offered to help if we would give him her motorbike. There is a special place in his hell for this rodent, he was a shitty human being.
The last straw for me, I walked into the bedroom one morning, I had been outside feeding our ducks. She said to me that she was afraid that one day I would leave, not come back, that she was too much, that I would leave her to die alone.
I never shared with her that it WAS too much, that I wanted to leave a million times a day, because I was breaking over and over. But I would never leave her like this, the love I had for her after all our challenges is something I don’t think I can ever explain.
Many of my family and friends, could not understand why I didn’t leave her after the fake kidnapping, didn’t understand why I was still there. She literally saved my life and showed me love when even I didn’t think I deserved it. She deserved grace when she fucked up. When she make a mistake.
This is when I LOVED her more, because that’s what you do, or at least what I do.
The last visit to the local hospital, they didn’t have a bed, but made her comfortable in the tiny alcove that served as their ED. It was late, and I spoke quietly with the on call Dr so we didn’t disturb my beloved. He told me not to wait for the results anymore. To hassle the hospital where we had been tested for a referral for admission to the Regional Ospital, the only place that would accept HIV patients. They legally had to accept her and it was her only hope.
Advocating For My Beloved Through a Maze of Stupidity
I called the hospital who had run the test, reminded them that she, by law was to be admitted to the Regional hospital as a part of their HIV protocol, and asked for them to arrange it immediately. I was done asking, my beloved was dying before my eyes and nobody seemed to give a shit, even her own family. Her children are the most disgusting humans I have ever encountered.
Compassion doesn’t need education especially when it’s for the mother that raised you. The monsters were too busy caring about self and not their mother wasting away in silence, I was her only advocate.
She refused to leave the farm unless there was someone to look after the animals. A local wasn’t possible, so I had to beg the second oldest monster (26) who wasn’t working to stay there while we went to the Ospital. His first response was that he couldn’t help, he had just washed his clothes, they were wet.
I held my tongue, I was stunned by this monsters response. I told him we had sun at the farm too, he could dry them there.
The monster eventually agreed, and arrived at the farm on the day we were to leave. He woke up when he saw how sick she was, and it was the first time that he had really shown real concern about her welfare, fear that she would die. She howled when she saw him. The hurt and fear and despair was in her voice, a voice that had been quiet for so long. I bawled, outside where she couldn’t see me.
And so started the long drive to the Ospital, the last one, only I would return five weeks later.