“Don’t cry, Mama. I can do this.”
While reassuring at best, the seven words that were uttered by a four-year-old girl lying on her death bed was more than enough to make her strong-willed mother shed tears of desolation unabashedly.
“I could not hold back my tears. Even as she neared her death, she was still strong. She didn’t even want to see me cry,” Carmela Buenaventura said as she reminisced on her last few moments with her daughter, Erica, the country’s first successful pediatric liver transplant.
On Sunday, Sept. 18, Erica succumbed to the dengue virus, a result of what doctors said was a combination of the viral infection and a weakened immune system brought about by a regular intake of antirejection drugs. The drugs were necessary to prevent Erica’s body from rejecting the organ that had been donated to her by her mother’s cousin in January.
The child’s interment will be held at 3 p.m. today, at Polo Memorial Park in Malinta, Valenzuela City.
“She has always been like that. Erica’s a fighter. Even before her transplant, she was already very brave and forward-looking,” the mother of five told the Inquirer in an interview at her daughter’s wake at Panghulo Chapel in Malabon City.
Before a pink coffin were relatives and friends who had gathered to pay their respects to the 4-year-old girl, whose death came barely eight months after she was discharged from the hospital.
White and pink balloons were in place, adornments that, Carmela said, Erica herself would have wanted to see.
Beside the coffin was a picture of the smiling child, taken right after doctors had gotten a blood sample from her.
“She cringed in pain when the doctors took the blood. After that though, everything was OK. She was smiling already,” Carmela told the Inquirer, a smile forming in her face as she reminisced.
The fond memories Carmela had of Baby Cute, as she was known to some, were also shared by some of her relatives.
Myrna Forbes, who took care of Erica when her parents were away, recalled how the child gave life to their house in Nuestra Señora Homes in Malabon, and how she somehow united the family when she was around.
“All our other relatives would come to our house when they found out Erica was there,” Forbes recounted.
“Even the neighbors would know that Erica was there because the child herself would announce it,” she added with a chuckle.
Juliana Ignacio, Erica’s 79-year-old great grandmother, was at a loss for words when asked how she remembered the child.
As soon as she heard the name of her great granddaughter, tears only began streaming down her face.
“Erica really, really loved her. I remember this one time the child called her to tell her that she really missed her,” Forbes told the Inquirer instead.
Shock
Erica’s death came as a shock to her and to her family, Carmela admitted.
She said that since her discharge from the hospital after the liver transplant, Erica was living like a normal child, and had even begun attending classes at Arnaldo’s Kiddie Learning Center in Barangay Panghulo.
“She would get good grades. She never wanted to miss a class. She liked school very much,” Carmela told the Inquirer.
Unlike before, Erica had also begun to eat a lot, and had even gained weight only in a span of a few months.
“She liked eating sinigang na baka, beef steak, tinolang manok … She was also Ms Cheesecake. She liked that a lot,” Carmela recalled.
While Carmela said that she had learnt to accept that her daughter “was really not meant to be with” them, she admitted that missing her would always be a given.
Holding back the tears, the grieving mother said that she and her husband would now strive to achieve the dreams that Erica had wanted for them, including a house that they could call their own, and formal wedding rites in church.
No regrets
But does she regret making Erica undergo the liver transplant? Carmela, without any hesitation, said no.
“I am happy that we got to spend time with her, even for a few months after the operation. I know that Erica has inspired many people,” she said.