My Brother Pulled The Trigger to End My Father's Life

I had wished my father to die. Now it has come true.

More than being sad about his death is my relief that finally, he rested. As you all know my father has suffered from multiple organ complications ultimately leading him to his deathbed.

It was a month long of the family going in and out of the hospital, wishing that our father will be healed. But at the tail end, we all had lost hope and surrendered.

On February 11, his heartbeat is already half the normal. At that moment there was nothing we could do about it anymore, and all it took to reverse the condition of my father is a miracle. By then I had estimated that my father will only last two more days. However, I was wrong as it was prolonged to two days more.

The trigger to my father's last breathe, we believe, was pulled by my brother. It was a whisper.

Our mother told us about a superstition shared by her officemate that once a terminally ill patient is already opening his or her mouth, no longer having the ability to talk and waiting for death, a whisper from a close relative would do the trick of shortening the suffering and leading to death.

That is what my brother did as soon as my mother shared it to us at home.

Upon arriving at the hospital together with our sister on February 15 at around 9 PM, my brother talked to our father in a small voice, “’Pa, you can rest now. Do not wait for your sister from Canada to come home because her flight was moved to later. And also because we know you are tired. I will take charge for everything that is left in our family.”

I said a similar thing before. But I said it to my father aloud and in private, so my command to my father apparently did not work unlike my brother’s.

Only about 30 minutes after my brother did the whisper, the time for my father came. His pulse and heart stopped beating.

While it was an expected ending, it was still a moment of refusal to accept the reality.

As soon as I arrived at the hospital, I had seen my father lifeless in the same bed I guarded him in the past month. I was emotional at the sight of him already gone, of course.

But since I had already talked and cried in front of my father when he was alive, although unresponsive, the baggage I carried in my heart was lighter than most bereaved.

Typically I am not one who believes superstitions, but I guess this one is an exception. If I only knew about it earlier, when Papa started to talk silently but still listened, I should have done it too so he suffered much, much less and be safe with the Lord sooner.

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Rest in peace, Papa. We will miss you. Your last wishes will be taken care of.