the twighlight of life ms. layos

8/3/2019 The Twighlight of Life Ms. Layos

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The Journey of Life

Life is all about learning, and acting out whatone has learned. I have used the word “learning” inthe broadest sense. It is not the limited kind of learning in school, university or college and other educational institutions, which apparently has beencreated in the course of developing oneself as acivilized human being . Learning here includes theprocess of absorbing knowledge both consciously

and unconsciously. It is that way that makes life asour best “teacher” for it is instrumental in shapingeach and every moment of our lives into aconscious living entity able to respond to the

challenges the world poses.

As I advanced in my student life, two things struck me; one is that lifecould be meaningful only if there would be a purpose to be fulfilled, someobjectives to be achieve; the second thing is that life has a unique opportunity.The goal of life becomes clearer everyday. It is never just all about money, it is

not an easy life, not the lure of sensate living which called us, but a clarion callsus to learn from life and take the meaning of it.

I’ve learned to value life in a deeper way. Every second there are at least twobabies born. A new life will come to see theworld and to experience how to live with it,but the counterpart of it is about death.Things could easily come and go. Fear of death is instinctive and universal because

there are few who understands the scientificand metaphysical implication of death. Lifeis a form or energy and energy isindestructible. Energy can only betransformed from one form to another aswhat I have learned in my Physics subject.Therefore, death can’t be an absoluteannihilation of the eddy of life. Death canonly be a point of transition in the process of evolution of life.



Both life and death are two things Iexperienced when I had my clinical duties in thehospitals. While I find this job training sorewarding, it is also incredibly upsetting. Workingwith sick patients who are struggling every

second for a longer life especially infants is reallyemotionally touching. Watching their sufferings ispainful. Some babies have chronic problems andthe worst part of it is some of them will die anddies. I grieve for them and for their families and Iwitness many parents with broken hearts.

Glancing back as my memory can take meinto the hazy corridor of the past, I remembered our duty at the PICU, it was last Feb. 8, 2010. I willnever forget the scenario how a baby boy and her mother caught my attention as I entered the PICU. Itseems like there’s a light that isolate them in thecrowd which tend to catch my attention. I walkedtoward them to see them closely and I first noticedthe physical condition of the baby. I felt thesufferings he was enduring with many contraptionsinserted to his innocent body. For more than amonth after he was delivered he started toexperience that pain. I can feel how it was difficult for the mother to see his firstbaby on that condition. I saw in her eyes how her heart breaks into pieceslooking at her baby crying every time the medical technologist needs to get a

sample of blood for couple of laboratory test. She may not expected all of thosethings to happen and never wish for that.

When a woman finds out thatshe is pregnant, she is anticipating so muchmore than just a baby. Along with her hopesfor a healthy baby, she has many optimisticexpectations for this pregnancy, the labor and delivery and the newborn period. Shestarts forming a picture of the extended

family. Indeed, she imagines being a certainkind of parent to a certain kind of baby, butwhen the baby was born prematurely, thetapestry that she’d been weaved abruptlychanged. The thread becomes rough andvivid, and she’s not sure what to do withthem. They are still the threads of feelings, the threads of her identity, but theyhave become more complex, more intense, more painful, and more challengingto work with. She feels unprepared. She cannot weave the pattern she’dplanned. Her tapestry is not what she thought it would be.



I had a chance to talk to her and she said thatshe never got tired. She can bear the heavyburden just to keep her going for her baby andshe never lost her strength to hold on. With fullof conviction she said that she will never give up

her baby even it is evident how difficult it is. Buta few weeks after, she started to lose her hopethat her baby will recover. She said that if she’sthe one to decide she doesn’t want to lose her baby but at the back of her mind she wanted her baby to be at peace and to completely stop thesuffering he was experiencing. It’s very difficult for her but she told me, “Onceyou become a mother your priority will change, your decisions and plans alsochange. You need to do what is best for your baby even if sometimes it mighthurt you, because one of the highest form of love is letting somebody go”…

She started to surrender everything to God and realized that whatever happens in the world it happens accordingto His law and His benevolence. She wasstanding at his bedside and she said,“When it gets to be too hard and you can’tfight anymore it’s okay to let go”. She hadto say that. She had to let him go, becauseshe certainly didn’t want him to suffer.

For the parents whose baby spendsdays, weeks or month in the PICU, deathis a frightening prospect. When you are inthe unit, you can’t help but notice that thisoutcome is a possibility for a prematureinfant. You may let yourself think about death, but you may still feel haunted

about it.

After staying at the PICU for 8 hours dutyit seems like time is too slow for those who wait,too swift for those who fear and too long for those who hope. An 8 hours duty for me seeingthat baby seems like 1 year of waiting for him tobe okay, but I realized how much more hisparents are waiting for more than a month. Istepped out the PICU with so many questionsin my mind, like what would happen next to thebaby? How his parents can be more stronger

fighting the odds from these type of life challenges and situation?



After being personally attached to that scenario I realized that I will go back tomy real life being a daughter, a sibling and a student. I will go on with my reallife while they are continuously holding on with that situation. Then I recognizedthat everyone has to travel along the path to faith or tragedy by his own effort,

aided in a sense by destiny.

Few weeks after, the other group was assigned to the PICU andunfortunately the baby was not there. They asked the staff nurse if the baby wasdischarged and the staff said that the baby passed away. I know deathmagnifies all the feelings of guilt, failure and longing. Emptiness seems endlessand it requires a lot of time and emotional work to emotionally be able to “goon”. They will need to shed a certain number of tears or feel a certain number of pangs before they can accept their baby’s death. Every time they cry thoseparticular tears or pangs are behind them and they moved along toward their healing. No tears are wasted. In spite of the unpredictable ups and downs of that painful journey, they can expect their grief to slowly soften yet not on overtimebasis. Eventually they discover that they canremember their baby without falling apart.Their sadness and longing for their little onewon’t disappear entirely, but they will mellowconsiderably. They can also acquire a senseof peace. They’ll never forget, their life willnever be the same, and they’ll always bear

scars, but their broken heart will heal.

A year after I saw the parents of thatbaby boy I was happy because theyremembered me but much more than that I was happy seeing them together holding hands and as I looked at them I knew they were moving on. It seemsthat a new life came on their way. I was very grateful that I had a chance toknow them and I know I learned a lot from them.

“When dark clouds of despair begin to gather on the horizon of life, whenhope recedes and when even the will within you begins to crumble, hold

yourself together, reinforce and never give up. Don’t lose the strength of conviction. Recover your will to live because when you have the will, there arealways chances that you will weather the storm. It may seem difficult, it is. Butthe effort is worth it. That has life taught me, and that’s the real journey of life”…...

Jhonessa Jerusalem Layos



Laguna State Polytechnic University

Santa Cruz Campus

Santa Cruz, Laguna

Batch 2012

This article was evaluated by:

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Author:

Jhonessa Jerusalem Layos

BSN IV-A

The Twilight of Life

the twighlight of life ms. layos

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