Christ the King Columbarium. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Today is my uncle’s inurnment, roughly three years after he suddenly died of suspected Covid during the early days of the pandemic. Almost all his surviving siblings came, so a number of my cousins were there, too.
From our departure from my apartment to Christ the King Seminary that is 15 minutes away, I saw the trees shedding their leaves and the branches have become bare. Dried leaves have been floating around, riding the wind. It’s the signal that the long hot and dry season is upon us. The trees have prepared for the dry spell; by late April and May, they will be a riot of colors as they show off their blooms.
In the garden, in the middle of the Christ the King Columbarium. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
My uncle has become dust while the world around us continues with the cycle of life. Leaves are dying so enough resources can be channeled by the trees into producing flowers and then the seeds may be spread before the rainy season starts, to nurture new life.
We die in different ways. There are times that our bodies have died and given up the ghost, so that the spirit can continue to live. There are times when our bodies continue to live even if our spirits have died. How do we then go on?
We just…go on…and continue with the cycle of life. We have lost our leaves and we can channel our remaining energy into planting seeds so we may live another life.
My time in this apartment is up and I’m closing this chapter in my life. I have loved, lived, and died in this home so I have planted my seeds elsewhere. Like the sturgeon and salmon, I’m going back to where I came from to give new life to my spawns while I…
I don’t know.
Maybe like the salmon, I will go back to where I came from to die. Or be like the sturgeon, I will live to a hundred even after spawning. I have no idea what I will be; all I know is that my 5 years in this apartment are enough and it’s time to leave behind the ghosts of the past. This apartment always reminds me that I was not good enough.
My new home, on the other hand, is a reminder that I am good. That I am enough. No one will treat me like dirt because I am not good enough. In this new life that I have planted, no one is allowed to treat me like dirt again. And before I become dust, I vow that I will live my life with dignity and grace.
Here is June, my favorite Youtube cook (and resident cook at Delish). She uploaded this video of her grief a year after her mom died. This is the first time I visited her personal channel after watching a new episode of Budget Eats and learned that she and her partner and occasional food taster, Aaron, had broken up). I saw in this video how raw grief could be and how universal it was to receive messages from our loved ones in our dreams.
I sent this to my friend, B, and told her that she may find this helpful or cathartic and she doesn’t have to watch it soon. She can watch it next year. She said, she appreciates how I keep her in my thoughts.
Anyway, June talked about her scary and confusing dream about an emperor penguin attacking her, trying to protect her young from her. She dreamed about the terrifying emperor penguin around the same time her mom died.
One Sunday in July 2005, I woke up from a dream, crying. My father was in the hospital and dying. He died in front of my eyes. But I knew my dad was just downstairs in his room, but I was panicking still. I called my mom who was on a business trip in Iloilo and was also visiting my uncle—my father’s brother–and his family. I told her to come home immediately as I dreamed about dad dying. I told my sisters and my brother. I can’t remember if it was my mom or my sister who told me that we already knew he’s going to go sooner or later since only 30% of his heart muscles were functioning after his heart attack in 2000 and that the doctors only gave him a year to live and yet here he was, five years on, still fighting. No need to fret, they said.
I couldn’t get it out of my head. I left for Quezon City later that day because I had classes on Monday (grad school in UP Diliman). But before that, my dad cooked me breakfast and told me to take my medicine as I was coughing and may have an asthma attack later. I didn’t heed him. I just said I will come back Tuesday.
I was still unsettled.
I did not come back Tuesday. I told myself I will come home Thursday.
On Wednesday morning, I woke up, said goodbye to my partner (with whom I was secretly part living with on-and-off at that time) and went back to bed. I had a weird sensation of seeing myself giving my partner a hug—-this uncomfortable feeling of being watched from above.
After lingering a bit on the bed, I marched to the other room where my office was and watched the Korean drama Attic Cat on my computer as a way of procrastinating before tackling an editing job I must finish (I was a part-time editor for an English-language editing service in Hong Kong).
My brother called me on my phone. He was crying. He found my father dead on his bed; he wet his bed in his sleep.
I called up my older sister who was at work. She fell on her seat and started crying. I called up my mom, who was having breakfast with my uncle and the rest of the family. She started wailing. I told her, I told you to come home…my dream was a warning…
My brother and another uncle (who was also a professor in our university) immediately brought my dad to the funeral home. They were told that my brother may have found my dad 30 mins – 1 hr after he died since rigor mortis hasn’t really set in yet when they were fixing my dad. Or something to that effect, I couldn’t remember anymore.
My brother often had breakfast with my dad; he would drop by our house after his first class. Without fail that day, my dad cooked breakfast for my brother. However, the screen door was locked that morning when my brother knocked on the screen door. He knew my dad was inside but was not responding. He knew something was wrong. He started breaking the screen door to unlock it, used his key to open the heavy wooden front door, and saw my dad peacefully sleeping. One leg was propped up, as his usual position. But he was already cold.
A neighbor told me that she saw my dad early that morning going to church for the first mass of the day, at 5:30 am (or 6 am?). It was surprising because he normally didn’t go to church because he didn’t want people to see him sick. That’s how proud he was—he didn’t want people see him weak.
While we were waiting for my father’s body to arrive (not in the next 12 hours or so), I checked my dad’s room. He had worn his favorite red and white striped shirt that he had hung behind the bedroom door. He had in his pants’ back pocket my mom’s, my sisters’, and my handkerchiefs. I cried so hard. I think he knew he was dying that day.
A day before, he had one of his best friends visit him and they had a very long and fruitful conversation in our porch. At one point, he told his friend (which he told us) that he was ready to go as he has already settled what he needed to settle with his children…meaning he has sort of finally had some relationship with us. His only regret in life was he wasn’t able to give us material comfort because he was too proud and so fixed in his ways and refused to go with the system to become rich, he said.
I remember him telling me this, that he was being bought by one company he was fighting with because it was polluting a fishing community in Pangasinan (He was a faculty of the School of Environmental Science at that time). He said he could have taken the money and gave us a more comfortable life. But he didn’t.
So during my dad’s memorial, I told everyone and my dad, that it was ok if we weren’t rich. That we didn’t get to travel the world. That we were always short on cash when we were growing up. He shouldn’t feel guilty and regret some of his choices in life. I told everyone and my dad that he taught me–us—that integrity, dignity, and keeping our name clean are more important than any financial gain. It is the best lesson and gift that he could give us children. The lessons like fighting for your rights and fighting for people with lesser voice are worth more than gold. Living an upright life and not sponging on anybody is vital because DIGNITY is something other people couldn’t take away from you.
Every time I commit driving booboos, I remember my dad. I knew he would wring my neck. He always reminded me to check my tires (and pressure), radiator water, and engine oil before going on a long drive. I always remember him whenever I do those.
When I let my mom read my speech before the graduating students of my undergrad college, my mom told me, I am my father’s daughter. She sent my speech to my dad’s friends.
I know he is with me with my fight against our water concessionaire. My guts, pigheadedness, sense of justice, and the gumption came from him.
No, we do not get over the death of our loved ones. Even though they have hurt us at times. We just learn how to live with their absence. The grief does not go away. Your body just wraps around the grief and you grow around it.
I just discovered Haley Kalil this week and she’s funny.
I always get invited to press conferences with two tables: One for media and one for influencers and vloggers/bloggers. This is very true for presscons of consumer-facing companies like telcos and real estate. I often wondered about how do these people even keep up with making content everyday, setting up cameras and shoot themselves walking back and forth to give a false sense of, yeah, this is how I live my everyday life.
Apparently, it is a full-time job and they even have managers. I think if you are a “content creator” (a new job description I learned this year) and have your own wares to peddle like Nicolas Fairford, who has launched his own brand of tea wares, you have another revenue stream. However, for content creators who rely most of the time for sponsorships, you don’t have a choice but to lie to your viewers that you do indeed use their products—the more sponsorships, the more revenues you have. Even if their products suck. And if you are a content creator who relies mostly on ad revenues—you’re better off with your day job because Google sucks the life out of you as I read that unless you are the top 1% of xxx (can’t remember if it’s your country/market/or Youtube), you will not really make money that could pay your bills.
By the way, Haley is gorgeous. Like Cindy Crawford x Angelina Jolie gorgeous.
Grief is love holding on
This is the thing I told my friend who is grieving for her father, who died while in ICU in the US. She couldn’t fly there on short notice and it’s little use since they will be bringing his body back anyway since her parents are really based here.
I told her I have no comforting things to say because there’s nothing else in this world that can make her feel better, based on my experience. So just let grief overwhelm you, I said. Don’t pressure yourself to be ok because it’s not ok. Don’t think about how long it will take you to grieve. Don’t let other people dictate how long you will grieve, I told her.
It’s a pain that will never go away. We just learn to live with it. Nobody will understand your pain because your pain is yours alone.
B sent me a video of her last conversation with her dad while in the ICU (which was not permitted but was made possible by her sibling who slipped the phone inside the room–probably the sibling was a nurse). I told her to save it on the cloud because she will be watching it everyday for a long time. I said I saved my father’s text messages to me (hey, early 2000s!) on my phone and held on to them for years until my phone got snatched from my bag. I even lost his phone number. One time I was so overtaken with grief I sent that number a text message. It was a comfort to me, pretending that I could still message him.
“Until now, 17 years have passed, there’s still a dull pain somewhere in my chest when I remember that. I feel like crying now. It’s something that never goes away,” I told B.
“In a way, that’s comforting to know. I don’t want to forget him,” B replied.
“Grief is love holding on. You will hold on to everything,” I said.
I told B: I have a friend who messaged me out of the blue one night and asked if he was already going insane or something was really wrong with him because it was already a year since his dad died but he was still crying and grief-stricken. He quit work because he really took it hard.
I told him that no, he’s fine. He’s not yet insane. There’s no timetable for grief. I told him that I was also jobless for a year when my dad died. I decided to be a full-time graduate student so I can just coast along and grieve. I only felt the urge to go find work when I found myself scrounging for money to buy myself airtime/SMS load for my phone. “Don’t mind other people; your grief is yours alone. We hold on because that’s what we only have left now. And it’s ok.”
Then B said: This helped a lot. Salamat.
I have other thoughts about how I lived with grief after a loved one has died and grief over losing myself over someone who didn’t deserve me at all. There are many types of grief: there are those that it’s ok if we keep it for the rest of our lives (death) and there are those that we need to get out of (love and betrayal) because, I don’t know…It doesn’t feel right anymore. There may be others but on top of my head are these two that I know.
I will just write about it some other time because it would be emotionally draining but at the same time cathartic. But I’m not for it right now.
I just want to relax and watch houses that I will never have.
I am supposed to visit you in S. Korea when I come there in October. I didn’t tell you first about this plan because I could see that you are in and out of the hospital the past few months. I don’t didn’t want to pressure you to get better. I saw your last post that your were put in isolation. I had always prayed for you whenever your body failed you. Then I read Yo’s early morning post that you already passed. I was in Singapore at that time. I couldn’t process your death well because I was busy with work in a foreign country.
You were the stage actress that I looked up to in our group. I remember that time when I sang Joey Ayala’s “Bathala”, you provided the impromptu interpretative dance that had everybody in stitches. You taught the craft at the Philippine High School for the Arts when I left to pursue my journalism career and I told myself, how lucky were the students to have you as their mentor. When I was making a fool of myself during one of our performances in Letran because I was struggling with the Henerala Agueda character (I wasn’t able to completely memorize the script), you supported me by ad lib-ing so much.
I never heard a negative feedback from you even though I was messing up. You always encouraged me. You and Bill saw my potential way back in high school and the rest of the ensemble took me in after that.
I’m sorry I was not so much of a friend the past few years. We were all charting our own paths, with our own struggles. When Bart died at the start of the pandemic, I worried about you because you were among the immunocompromised people I know. But then I knew you were better off there than being stuck here although you are away from family. I thought that your university where you taught ought to be taking care of you well…
Your love for the theater and the arts never died as you continued your podcasts with our fellow stage people even from afar.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
No more pain. You are now with Him.
While you aren’t here in this photo, this still reminds me of our group. Our memory keeper, Bart, already went ahead of you so we couldn’t recover our archives.
Dear Theater Actor,
Congratulations! You had a good opening night. You received so much flowers and gifts from admirers. I don’t think I ever received such gifts on any opening night I had…😂😂😂 Hopefully I can still catch the last run of your performance, but damn it’s so difficult. Scheduling my vegetable shopping is already difficult for me. Hahahaha! Shall I bring flowers backstage? I dunno; it will just get buried with all the other flowers that you often receive. Am I brave enough to meet you backstage? That I have yet to see.
My colleague’s little girl died today. Her organs were failing and then she just gave up. Our fundraising is still ongoing as he still couldn’t pay the entire hospital bill. I said I will give him the funds by end of the week after our fundraising is over. As he was speaking to me he broke down, he let out a raw cry of pure anguish that you cannot just describe properly. He says he is overwhelmed with grief and at the same time gratitude to people he even doesn’t know who are helping him.
I told him, you know, we are parents, too.
He is also crying because he has soooooooo many regrets.
I was chatting with the girl’s mom this morning (we had been chatting throughout the years) and she told me:
I told my friends before that I am just a woman appliance. For years, I ignored my needs, and I felt like if I am low maintenance (tough and not needy), I am easier to love. Before, I thought I was a superwoman. I did most (if not all) of the house chores, childrearing, while working full time (work from home). But then it dawned on me, I also have needs. That’s why I hired 2-3 nannies with shifts. My stress disappeared, my shouting. For the past 3 years I was happy because I have efficient helpers with me for child-rearing.My children made me realize that I’m more than an appliance. I am thankful that I felt that with my little girl even if she is almost (a) non-verbal (autistic child).
The background here is that my colleague cheated on the little girl’s mom (wife) by having an affair and a child with a very young journo (what’s with young female journos??? because they’re gullible?). The only reason why they haven’t separated physically yet is because the little girl needed to see her dad regularly since instability is difficult for a child under the spectrum. But the (ex)-spouses aren’t on good terms. As I said before, we in our circle/trade organization know everybody’s business; we’re nosy like that. That’s why we’re journos; news spread fast. That’s why everyone knows about J, that other journo girl, and me even though I haven’t spoken about it.
Anyway, I know where the mom is coming from, feeling like a woman appliance. I know exactly how she felt and what she went through. I thought doing all those things for J and being tough and not needy would make him love me more. I ignored my needs. But I was wrong. She was wrong. We cannot make them love us if they don’t and if they just see us as human appliances. Someone useful.
I told her I completely understand her as I’ve been through that twice.
I said her little girl wants to go to Palawan with her now (they couldn’t do that before because they always had to be near a hospital for her sporadic seizures). This is her little girl’s way to make it possible for the her (mom), the little girl, and the little brother to go to Palawan. I told her take little girl’s favorite stuffed toy and take pictures/selfies in the places the three of them will go to, the trips that they will have. Make an Instagram account of that so we can see.
She said:
Yes will do that. I’ll just take a rest. Thank u again, CallMeCreation. I really love talking to you, for some weird reason it feels like you’re my sister.
I told her, “I am because we are bound by the same suffering and our love for our children. Take a rest. You still have a long journey ahead of you.”
As I said before, our children are the only ones who have given us unconditional love. No ifs and buts. Even if we smell like the kitchen and we look like shit, they still love us just because. We are their world. As parents, we would give our lives for them and if we lose them, it’s like we also have died with them. And as King Theoden in Lord of the Rings said, no parent deserves to bury their child.
Good night, little angel. Look after your mom and little brother. Oh, your dad, too.
A colleague’s daughter suffered a three-hour seizure episode and had a hard time getting admitted to any ER because every hospital in the metro is full of Covid cases. She is intubated and on life support now, in the FEU parking lot because there really is no space for her. She is around 7 years old or younger.
The cost now of hospitalization is very high as he posted on FB:
Right now, she’s confined in one of the tents in FEU. Because of COVID safety protocols, the bill can reach PHP 50k (USD 1k) per day because PHP 4k per PPE plus PHP 5k per swab of each doctor and nurse watching over her on rotation. I don’t know yet how much the intubation, bloodwork, x-ray and other tests would cost. I no longer have the strength to ask. As long as G’s condition stabilizes, that’s all I want to hear. But we may still be far from that.
I contacted his boss (this colleague isthe Philippine correspondent of a sister publication so he’s not under me) to inform him of what’s going on and to ask if something can be done to help ease his financial burden, like a salary advance or loan from our mother company or maybe the company employees pass the hat. This afternoon my colleague showed me his running bill for 24 hrs and it’s already more than PHP 100k. He told me that apparently his daughter has been having seizures for 24 hrs but they just didn’t know because those were just ticks and they were sleeping so they weren’t aware. Because of that, her brain may have been deprived of oxygen.
The child’s mother (also a friend) posted on FB that the doctor said she may already be brain dead; she hasn’t woken up yet.
I have asked our journo organization here to extend financial help to ease his worries. The current president is a good friend of mine and he said he will raise it to the board.
I know how it is when your child/children are on life support, fighting to see another day. I didn’t have the strength to cry at that time whenever I saw my twins full of tubes, watching their monitors, hoping that I won’t see a flat line. I held up and didn’t allow myself to be weak because once I start crying, I will crumble and never function anymore. I never rested; the day I got released from my hospital confinement after my Caesarian section, I traveled to my twins’ hospital everyday. CS mothers are usually given enough time to rest; I didn’t allow myself to rest. I needed to be with my babies everyday and express breast milk because they needed to be fed via gavage tubes since they were too premature to suck on their own.
I couldn’t think about hospital expenses at that point; my thoughts were on my children’s survival. I saved money to prepare for my children’s birth but I didn’t expect that they would be spending 31 days in the NICU. It’s hard to think about bills when you don’t know whether the doctor will just suddenly come to you and say your child/children have flatlined and are never coming back.
You cling to hope. To hell with hospital bills.
So I’m doing everything in my power to help this colleague.
As part of this reflection about life and death, I started writing ahain on my old-school journal so I can finally close this 2021 chapter. I needed to fill up the gaps from the moment I stopped writing in July to my Covid episode, to my reflections of 2021. So I can leave it all behind.
My 2021 journal. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Why do I bother doing it? So that my children can have something tangible to hold on to when I die. My memories will live with them. Twin I declared, no Mommy, you are immortal. You will live forever.
Yes darling, I said in my head, I will live on these pages, and on my blog.
