WIDOWER

WEEKS after my wife died at the age of 38 from breast cancer last August 5, I remember going in a daze to the Social Security System office in downtown Manila to file for funeral benefits. I came late and there was already a queue of anxious people waiting for their turn at the counter. A small group made me a part in their curious conversation, two of them widows in their fifties. The men are either retirees filing for pension or younger ones filing for sickness benefits. I didn’t meet in that small group a husband like me who had lost his wife.

That’s where I heard a chorus line of their opinion of me or my present situation: “Batang-bata ka pa para maging biyudo (You’re too young to become a widower).” I try to figure out the meaning of the words batang-bata (very young) and biyudo (widower). Well, it's true about the first word, relative to the widows and the retirees. But I was stung by the second word.

I left the cramped building finding myself shaking off stupor and trying to contemplate on the word biyudo, so clear and factual, as a new category of my civil status.

I belong now to thousands of Filipinos every year who are thrust into the role of a widow—young actress Camille Prats being one of the latest additions—and widower, being forced to learn how to cope on their own after many years of sharing a life with their partners. But a widower and a single father at my age is a very rare circumstance. An American survey reveals that widows outnumber widowers by nearly five to one.

During the wake, a cousin told me that among our relatives, there are widows but never there has been a widower. For her record, I must be the first widower in our enormous clan. An aunt and a grandaunt, both widows residing abroad, called me up in separate occasions to offer comforting words, but they could only tell me as far as what they had gone through as a woman or a mother who had lost their respective partners. They only have hypothesis on how a male homo sapiens would get by when he lost his life's mate. 

While my widowed relatives speak of feeling abandoned or deserted, I felt I have lost a big chunk of me. I saw myself as an incomplete human being and presently incapable of so many things, such as managing the household and caring for my three children. Last month, my primary source of inspiration and comfort had vanished without warning. What's left with me is this horrible fact that I have another 30 or more years left in this world without a partner.

I am on my last semester in law school, and by next month, I will be taking the last final exams for the course. At the time of my wife's death and the ensuing wake, I was scheduled to take the mid-term exams. Missing the exams and having incurred a number of absences more that what is required in most of my subjects made me decide to file a leave of absence, or perhaps to stop law school altogether. Without the encouragement from my classmates, I might not have gone back.

My wife had always been my inspiration. When I failed on my first try at law school, she lifted me up, and supported me even more when I transferred to another school. Without her now, I suddenly lost my direction, as if I was floating in an unchartered sea without my sail. I mourn not only for my spouse who died, but also for the future I had expected to have with her. 

My classmates and some of my friends may see me "acting normal again" but when I am alone the grief frequently returns. No matter how much I tried to regain my life, carry on with normal routines for my children's benefit, and catch up with the lessons, in preparation for the final exams, I am still bothered with numbness and denial. My grief doesn't magically dissipate. I still couldn't concentrate; my focus narrow.

Sometimes I was racked with guilt, and I regretted the lack of or poor decisions I had made. I even blamed my wife’s death on myself. I should not have allowed her to find cure outside of medical intervention. I should have had my way in forcing her to proceed with the surgery at the earlier stage of her illness. I should have done something to dispel her fear with chemotherapy. I should have stopped law school to have more time with her, although she wouldn’t allow that. But I was enfeebled by my lack of financial resources to help her, and blinded by some ambition we had shared. I lacked the ability to rescue her and to be her great protector. 

Fortunately some of my friends and relatives came to me with their empathetic eyes, kind offers of support, and encouraging Facebook postings and text messages, which helped a lot in my desperate condition. Some wanted me to engage myself with active coping and problem-solving strategies like work, a sports activity, or giving my full time with my kids. Some are candid enough to suggest that I have to let go and find a new partner at once. 

But that last advice is something I'm not yet ready to consider. I don't want that the main reason I pursue a new relationship is because I was lonely and missed the affection of my late wife. I don't want to become involved in a relationship before I am emotionally ready to take that step. Or I'm not even sure if I would ever remarry.

For the meantime, I prefer to be alone with my thoughts, reflecting on ways to cope with my new situation. I have to rebuild my life “one small block at a time” as some psychologists would readily advise people who are at a grieving mode.

For a start, I have to focus on my children's interest. I have to see how I could help them cope, and let them feel that in spite of our loss, we can revert to our normal lives and move on. I don't know how well they are recovering from the crisis. Dudoy won the gold medal in a spelling contest competed by private schools in our district in Bulacan. Eya maintained her first place position in the top ten for the first grading. N-yel, though moved down in the ranking in his class, became active in a Christian youth organization outside school. These might me good signs, but I must be on my guard especially this coming Christmas season.

And thank goodness for books. I always find reading therapeutic. It really helps me keep my sanity, before and during my wife's illness, and most especially now that I am at my lowest ebb two months after her death. I have bought lots of books, mostly secondhand items from Booksale, and whenever I have a chance, I squeeze on my time reading. I kept myself busy with the printed words, as if I get scared that when I'll run out of books to read, so with my sanity.

And one thing I did is to go back to blogging. I stopped posting on this blog more than a year ago, or around that time when my wife's condition started to go downhill. I revive this blog as a way of detailing my life in my road to recovery. It's a way for me to express my thoughts, no matter how random or trivial they are. I like to write, as much as I like to read. Let me just say that blogging, or writing generally, has also calming effect.

In fact, I already had an exhilarating and giddy relief when I was writing this article for my blog.



Bonding with my kids at EDSA Shangri-la Hotel

A PHOTOGRAPHER’S ART

DURING my wife’s wake, I decided not to take pictures of anything that happened. I don’t want to see images that remind me of the pain of losing my wife, with every moment stuck in my memory box. My sudden indifference to capture every part of this reality is I think understandable. Pictures from the wake would just stall my recovery from the tragic episode of my life.

I remember, however, that during the wake of my sister-in-law’s husband who died in May 2009, I volunteered to take the snapshots from the wake until the funeral. I even made from these pictures and video shots a 20-minute music video (a combination of photos and video clips). I didn’t have any idea on how my sister-in-law (my late wife’s elder sister) felt then when she looked at the pictures or watched the video after I presented them a few days after the funeral. The memories of their grief were hardwired in those episodes that I captured with my Kodak Easyshare digital camera. Would these downloadable memories help the family recover from that most sorrowful event of their lives? I don't think so.

On the third day of my wife’s wake, I brushed aside my resolve not to take any picture. That was when my kumpare and good friend, Ricky Canta, came to the wake and volunteered to take pictures during the funeral. How could I say no?

Ricky is a good friend. He was the photographer for Citylife magazine where I also worked then as assistant editor. My wife was the circulation clerk of said publication. The three of us became close friends. Ricky is tall and mild-mannered but with a good sense of humor. He was in his thirties then, married with three kids. The magazine job was just a part-time for him, as he was principally an event photographer. But in between work, he would stay in the press room until the completion of the magazine. So after a long press work, we would go out to unwind in some bar in Kalookan or Quezon City, as a treat, of course, from our tireless editor Joe Bautista.

As expected, when Rosalie and I got married in 1996 or just a few months after our meeting in the publication, Ricky was our unanimous choice for the official wedding photographer. He didn't charge for his service. He became my kumpare a year after, when he stood as a godparent for my firstborn. And of course, he also covered the baptismal ceremony. Rosalie resigned from the publication six months after the wedding. And when the magazine folded up a year later, Ricky went on his own way, establishing his photography business in Cavite. I’d lost contact with him after that. But thanks to Facebook, we were able to renew our contacts after more than a decade. He learned of Rosalie’s death only from my FB post two days after her death.

Ricky came to the wake barely an hour before midnight. He still couldn’t believe what happened to her. Before he left, he told me that he will take charge of the photography during the funeral. Free of charge. I just said “Yes, and thanks,” but with the condition that he would not take any close-up of my wife in the coffin.

Ricky had a total of 682 shots during the funeral, taken from the early morning before the necrological mass up to the parting of the guests in the cemetery. It’s a helluva lots of pictures—sad, poignant images—now stored in a DVD-R.

According to American author Eudora Welty, a good snapshot stops a moment from running away. They stay, and in these particular snapshots from Ricky, the emotion lingers. But at a second look, these shots are work of an artist. The shots are full expression of what he felt about his subject. They are drawn on an inspiration, rattled only by a grief of his own, as I caught him with tears while focusing on his angles.

Here are just a few of his shots. I might put the title “Grief” on top of the sample, because that's what is all about. I rather forget this little pang of unease that evoke those painful memories. The reality is beside the point now; the images were all that mattered.