About Ampy (part 3)

Ampy in the middle (around 2004)

In the latter part of the 80s, Ampy reached retirement age and bought a piano and an electric organ with her end-of-service payment. They were meant for my mentally challenged aunt who played the piano like god, and for me who was learning it then. In 1991, when I transferred to LSM in high school and my mom and I moved back into my dad's house, Ampy asked me to take the electric organ so I could continue playing. I was hesitant knowing it was expensive and a major investment on her part, but she insisted. Unfortunately I didn't become half the piano player my mentally challenged aunt was.

In high school, we still frequented Ampy's house on some weekends and special occasions. Sometimes she and my relatives would visit us in Sta. Mesa. However, because of the distance, the contact became naturally less. I entered adolescence and became too tied to my world in the new school. In college, just like any adult, I became even busier that sometimes I tried to cut short our phone conversations.

As I was growing up, I failed to realize that Ampy was getting old. She used to seek my help in dyeing the hard-to-reach parts of her head but I didn't think of it much. I was too amused by the act of coloring her whitening hair. To me she was like any friend I had; I didn't even call her auntie or tita. I didn't realize our age gap until college, when I got frustrated because I couldn't take her to Enchanted Kingdom to ride the 360-degree roller coaster. As a teenager, I wanted to bring her too to clubs and discos but realized she was too old for that.

It came to a point that my fingers could count the number of times I'd been to Ampy's house in a given year. During one of my visits, I learned that her stamp collection was gone. She had also donated to some cause her beloved doll collection. Only my mom was enthusiastic enough to visit her sisters weekly while I was too busy with school and increasingly scarce in family occasions. Then one day I started getting wind that Ampy was having eye problems. Thru my mom, the news reached me in trickles. I would hear that Ampy visited the eye doctor frequently. I would hear that she had difficulty writing letters. I would hear that she had small accidents in the house bumping into the table or a chair. That one of her eyes had completely lost vision. Until one day I just heard that she finally ended up totally blind.

Or rather, good as totally blind. Because although one of her eyes can still see, the images are so fuzzy and bereft of light that she can't be on her own elsewhere but the house. Why that had to happen to her was beyond my understanding. It brought to pieces my concept of justice and fairness. The doctor said she was a case of glaucoma discovered too late. According to my mom, Ampy said she had been seeing fuzzy light for some time and thought it a form of divine apparition, which in reality was the symptoms of the disease. Given my mom's talent for animated storytelling, that version of the story must have been an exaggeration.