This is a story about my father’s passing—a story that I don’t know where to start or where to end.
For the past ten years of my work life as a journalist, I, along with other scribes, took a personal responsibility to write stories about PNG’s ailing healthcare system. We fought for better healthcare services to cater for ordinary Papua New Guineans who cannot get fancy treatment overseas. We fought so hard to keep the government in check and to remind them of the ailing health infrastructure and services that the country is faced with.
But on the 10th of October 2023, I stood next to my father’s sickbed at the Rabaul Provincial Hospital at Nonga and watched over him as he took his final breath through a nebulizer, losing his battle to a curable disease.
Blaming myself for my father’s death
I blamed myself for not doing enough as a scribe to convince the health authorities that our health system simply isn’t working. It is giving false hope to Papua New Guineans that those suffering from curable sicknesses and diseases will be saved.
My conversations with my ‘Paps’ had been drastically reduced from verbal communication to sign language, then to just body gestures. He knew his days were numbered, but he didn’t share his pain with us until the day we rushed him to the hospital. He was a fighter who fought every inch of the battle for nearly a year. And within that year after his diagnosis with tongue cancer, it took just 12 days to bring him down for good.
He made it through an endless series of medical checks, blood tests, and countless medications. The nurse said she couldn’t find his blood pressure or his pulse rate, but somehow he was still alive. I knew he wouldn’t make it, but the question was, when?
The nurse said that unlike other patients who near their death, they lose their ability to converse well with those around them. But Papa’s experience was extraordinary. We were conversing, and he responded well until his last breath. Even though he knew he was fighting a losing battle, he never stopped searching for hope in his already debilitated health status for 12 days.
His Faith was important
His perseverance, and most importantly his Catholic faith, kept him alive for six solid days without food and six days on glucose through an intravenous tube.
For those who knew my father, he was a hard man to deal with. He grew up in the colonial era with strict discipline, which he applied in his own household, where my growing up was like living in a military camp. He gave more and expected less. He opened his door to every stranger.
I called him a ‘backstage crew’ who organizes an event well, then when the event is about to start, he takes off to the house, switches on the television, and watches rugby. He was a diehard Brisbane Broncos and Queensland Maroons fanatic. During State of Origin matches, he would remind Blues supporters to be mindful of their words and actions while cheering, as his house was a Queensland Maroons territory! We all submitted.
His life was a quest, where he not only tried to achieve his personal goal as a ‘didiman’, but he also inspired and helped others around him to achieve their goals in life. He taught us a lot of things in life. He taught us to lose and to celebrate our loss as if we have won. He taught us to have faith in our own ideas and to believe in oneself. He made responsible people out of us and discouraged fame and glory. He taught us to be gentle with gentle people and tough enough to fight the world without regrets.
A lot, he taught us
Those who have crossed paths with him would agree that he was aggressive—aggressive in the sense that he always wanted to see positive results. The feeling of having wonderful people around us is very beautiful, but the pain of them moving away is even greater. Papa Fidelis’s passing is one of those. But as we say, all good things must come to an end.
The battle he fought was alone, gruesome, and filled with emotion. He felt sick, yet smiled. He felt unhappy, yet delighted.
There were times that we laughed, we cried, and we screamed with joy. We participated as a team, a family, won together—the feeling of victory and the excitement… all these moments we’ve shared with him as a father to us are just priceless.
But since the 10th of October 2023, all these emotions have morphed into nothingness, as each day from then on ends without him, and how I wish it never would.
