A Two-Year-Old Daughter's Grief

Yesterday, I attended a funeral of a friend's twin sister, Charity, who died of osteosarcoma, the most common type of malignant bone cancer, at 27. Such a tragic loss of a beautiful, young mother of 4! While everybody was watching as fresh cement was applied to seal the casket in its final resting place in their family mausoleum, I gently touched Charmelle, her angelic 2 year-old daughter, who was just next to me being carried by her mother's twin brother's girlfriend, Joy. I whispered to her, "Say goodbye to Mommy now." To my astonishment, tears fell on her beautiful face for no reason as she was not obviously upset about anything as if she was silently grieving for her mother. Wait, she was silently grieving for her mother! She didn't make any sound -- not even a whimper -- as she just teared up and leaned her face on Joy's right shoulder.

Everyone soon started to notice this heart-wrenching scene of what I can probably surmise as an unexplainable daughter's bond to her mother. Instinctively, the women, most of whom were mothers, gathered around her and kissed her and comforted her and caressed her and stroked her hair though she still remained soundless, her face tear-stricken. I cried a sad tear, too, behind my sunglasses, as a silent witness with emotions flooding my heart as I grappled to make sense of this incredible spectacle.

One thought raced prominently in my head : an admiration for what seemed to me was an amazing display of tribal bond between women and how they respond almost instinctively and in unison to such an emotionally-charged moment. They surely know how to grieve gracefully and how they can make you feel the beauty, agony, and depth of a cherished relationship, even for a two-year old!

God bless the world for Charmelle. God bless the world for all the women in our lives who make us feel complete, or whole, or vulnerable, or stronger. They are what makes any relationship -- as a mother, daughter, sister, lover, friend -- intricately more complex yet simply, intimately more rewarding... a relationship worth taking to your grave.

Go!

I am late-- and too hurried to say goodbye, too harried to say hello. The freeway is my friend, taking in my greed for speed, where cars and people and the scenery are mere illusions or a blur of kinetic abstractions. Somewhere beyond the convergence of the firmament and the pavement lies the object of my haste. Time and space give way to the now. My gaze is transfixed at ten minutes into the future. Hie I must: forward, onward!

Glancing in the rear view mirror, I see myself glaring back at me as the immediate past trails gracefully behind me, unequivocally relinquishing the moment to the present. It is life's macrocosm in a brief linear singularity: the then and the now melding into a certainly uncertain thereafter.

Moving on is looking forward to something good. Looking back is knowing you are moving on to something better.

Too late to speculate.

(Photo by the Author)

What is $20 Worth?

I actually googled this query. Results : your own meme of "Stop Shooting" shirt, a Hello Kitty toaster, DIY Bendy Straws, Penguin Teaboy, and a Bike Chain bottle opener to name a few. To the upwardly mobile set, burning 20 bucks is a no-brainer: a 12-servings pack of Starbucks VIA™ Ready Brew Colombia Coffee, and while they are at it, they might as well throw in a copy of the Talking Heads Opus CD (okay, that's a little over a Jackson, but hey, you could afford Starbucks, right?). Perhaps a lower-grade copper Probus coin on eBay?

How about gasoline money for a truck ride home so you can be with your kids a few days before you die?

On a hot and humid late February morning, we decided to park our van underneath a tree along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City as my niece, Grace, went out to pay for her IELTS exam fees, while my sister, her husband, and myself waited. From his rear view mirror, Rosell, my brother-in-law, noticed a man in his 60's walk draggingly. He cranked his window down to ask him if he was alright. The man, clasping his stomach, obviously in pain, said he was just trying to make it to EDSA, a good couple of blocks away. Without much thought, Rosell prompted my sister, Helen, to hand me a 500-peso bill (roughly $10), to give to the man for his taxi fare and a decent lunch as well. I alighted, approached the old man, and--curious that I am--talked to him before I gave him the money.

A brief talk-- all 5 minutes short-- but it seemed like eternity to me...he was recently diagnosed of a late-stage colon cancer, and with it a death sentence, or so it seemed to him, handed by his doctor: he had until the first week of March to have an operation lest he would die. I began to rattle off names/organizations/agencies/foundations, the whole alphabet soup of so-called charitable institutions, including ABS-CBN (a major Philippine media network where he just came from) and our country's President's office, that he could go to. "Been there, all of them," he said, morosely. "I either got empty promises or hallow sympathies," his eyes resigned to the inevitable. His were a man's who slugged it out with the world and tried to out-maneuver fate as well. Whatever glimmer of hope left in there, however, was extinguished by the anguish he felt for being abandoned. In spite of the stabbing pain and the measured breaths, this man walked his way one leaden step after another , in search for any freaking help that he never got. Imagine a bed-ridden old man who awaits for his time: emaciated, in physical agony, yet doggedly determined to get out of bed, carried his deathbed, and walked for miles on end in pursuit of an elusive purpose. He was determined to beat the deadline-- only a week away. Tried he did to go beyond the limits of his dying body, but, alas, his dead hope and defeated spirit got the better of him: "All I want is some gasoline money for the truck that my friend offered me as a ride home to Tacloban (some 360 miles by land SE of Manila). I want to be with my children when I die. I want to be buried in my hometown. One thousand pesos (about $20). That's what keeping me away from my children and my burial plot right now," his words laced with bitterness the aftertaste of which I didn't mind at all. Thank you for the five hundred pesos; and would I mind if he had to move on (walk the two blocks to the bus station) to catch his bus? Of course, I didn't. I handed him the amount he needed. He held my hand and thanked me again, his eyes-- I had the gnawing feeling that that would be the first and the last time I will ever see him-- bade me farewell.

Yes, I did mind him leaving, in a way. I wished I could have done more. I didn't even get his name. However, to God he will never be a nameless, faceless son of His. My heart is with him, knowing he was with his children to celebrate life and love with them. For me, that is probably the best thing that $20 can get.

(Photo by fantasysage)

It's Only Words

Writing is a thirst I haven't quite quenched yet, a passion still to be unbridled. Lest I lose a cherished though neglected gift, I might as well give it free rein.

Writing is more than just neat syntax and clever juxtaposition of ideas. Words don't have a meaning. They seek a meaning. For words to have power, they need soul. A story chooses its listeners when the storyteller knows its heart and knows it by heart. After all is said and written, the ones that really stand the test of time are those with timeless message and ageless appeal. In their core lies the seed of truth guised as etched, scribbled, printed, or pixelated characters trying to find a purpose in order to escape the limits of abstraction.

To be a bearer of truth and to beautifully and meaningfully convey it are both my hope and fulfillment as a writer.

(Photo by Christine Lebrasseur)