When I learned about PNoy's passing

I was doing chemotherapy when I heard President Noynoy Aquino has died. The television inside the chemo room was tuned to DZMM Teleradyo. My patients, young women diagnosed with breast cancer, were asleep. I asked Ma’am She, the nurse, what the cause of death was. It was hard to say if I spoke too loudly—with the mask and face shield, I could not calculate my volume accurately—but I must have stirred my patients awake from their diphenhydramine-induced stupor. They had heard about PNoy’s passing an hour ago. I am always the last to know. The 37-year old mother with metastatic disease told me, “You never know when God will take you home. At least I know I will die because of cancer.”

For many months, PNoy has been out of my consciousness. I have not heard from him. I’d later learn he liked to keep to himself. His introversion was misinterpreted as coldness, nonchalance, indifference. But he was keen on details. He remembered the important numbers. He drank Coke Regular and smoked cigarettes and liked Aiza Seguerra. He said his I-love-you's to his favorite nephew, Josh. Later that day, I read Twitter, that marketplace of bright ideas and fake news, cute cat videos and expletive-infused rants. Someone confessed that his Araling Panlipunan teacher used to give them an assignment to write an outline of the President’s State of the Nation Address. “‘Yun ang mga panahong naiintindihan ko pa ang mga sinasabi ng Pangulo.”

I chuckled and mourned.