DAY ONE OR ONE DAY

FROM the time I was widowed in 2011, remarriage has been a common topic of conversation with my relatives and peers when my interaction with them turns highly personal. And even in casual meetings, these questions and their variations are common: “O may asawa ka na? (Have you finally got a wife?)” and after a negative answer, the usual follow-up “Kailan mo balak mag-asawa? (When do you plan to get married?).”

And a blunt answer may solicit the comment “Sabagay, maganda yan para maalagaan mo mga anak mo (Well, that’s good, so you have time to look after your kids).”

I seem to take it all in stride, unlike some unmarried woman I know who suffered the same if not worse on such casual remarks about getting hitched to the point of trying to shun family reunions or school batch gatherings. I understand there are religious, family and community rules and expectations surrounding singlehood and widowhood, but it’s my life and only I know what’s best for me. 

Maybe I find contentment in being single again and unattached. Before my married life, I used to live alone in a rented room in Quezon City, living independently just after college. So it’s practically just a revert of my old life, except that I have kids to raise. I am not the typical man that desperately seeks someone to organize his world, the everyday household tasks, and even his social life.

But I have this friend, a very close female friend of mine from high school days, who loves to tease me on my decision not to remarry, especially when she senses, after a brief komustahan, that I have somehow complaints in life. She would remark emphatically: “Mag-asawa ka na kasi (Why not get married). To stop the conversation, I would just answer “Darating din ako dyan (I’ll get there soon)” and she would add “Kailan? (When?)” In our last conversation this year, just to make her stop pestering me, I told her that I finally decided to get married again and starting the day after our meeting will be the Day One of my serious search of a lifetime partner. And she reminded me that “day one” is better than “one day” and added with full energy “Go! Go!”

My Day One turns into many days, a week, a month, and without making it happen. Then the impatient “Meron na ba” and “Kailan?” reverberated into the next meeting with her.

But when is exactly the Day One for a goal to get hitched again? 

I’ve read from an article of a news website that it usually does not take long for widowers to remarry. A University of Pennsylvania sociologist found the average time frame for widowers who remarry is about two-and-a-half years. For widows, it’s three to five years. This validates the stereotypes that men date sooner and remarry more quickly than women do.

Having widowed for the past six years means I am way past the average time frame. Honestly, for that span of years remarriage never occurred to me. Perhaps I think more of the welfare of my young children than my own. Or perhaps the state of resiliency in the face of tragedy plays into this as well. And a rapid decision to remarry, may result in hurt and hard feelings within our family. My mother-in-law confided to me that she cried when she saw me in her dreams having got a new wife. That’s understandable. Or perhaps I must be sure that I am not trying to replace my former spouse with just another warm body, so I have a higher set of standards. 

But for me is the readiness and the time when I have moved on with the tragic loss, and I think that I already did, though the big loss remains a big scar that reminds me of the pain the past brings. I no longer grapple with overwhelming distress of never seeing our family complete for the rest of our lives. I removed my wedding ring from my finger, well, only just a year ago. That took me six months to do it because I promised to my wife that I raise my right hand with the wedding ring on when I take my oath as a lawyer. But I didn’t pass the bar and I no longer have the time to retake it.

And, I have to think of my three kids, who are all in their teenage years now. I’m not sure if they are ready to accept a new wife for their daddy. I haven’t talked to my kids about this because it’s nothing to talk about because before today, I haven’t gone looking for a new wife.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll start saying “hi” with my most charming smile with new, young and pretty officemates or neighbors, or started chatting and greeting with single FB friends on messengers, or maybe give an ex a buzz. I haven’t done flirting since I got married, and maybe I just need a big burst of initial energy to start things right again. And maybe it will take a longer time to get there, but, with focus, sooner or later, I can have that someone who is just nice to be around. And I think I may have found one, and then maybe the kids will like her. 

And maybe now is Day One to embark on the pursuit of a worthwhile goal. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they did start the construction with a Day One.  

"UNFRIENDING" THE DEAD

IT’S this part of the year again we remember our beloved dead, and one thing just struck me at this moment: my Facebook friends who have crossed the Great Beyond still remain in my Friends List.

It’s just so easy to bid them the ultimate goodbye. Just a click on a button across their name and they're gone. But that I haven’t done. Nor have I tried skimming through my list and start deleting people. You know, those who have been inactive, those pesky ones who love to share troll-inspired information or fake news, and those whom I haven’t seen in so long time that I have forgotten why I accepted their Friend requests in the first place.

Maybe I’m too busy to do that, and I don’t really stay long Facebooking to afford overhauling my account to root out unnecessary or obsolete friends.

Or maybe, I feel ill at ease with the word “unfriend,” especially in the case of my wife who died in 2011. I like to think I honor her by remembering the good times she had with me and her family, and treasuring what she's left with me. 

HUMILITY IN THE WORK PLACE

I WAS tasked in January to deliver a pep talk for our agency, as part of our Monday’s flag-raising ceremony. It was a few days before the pastoral visit of Pope Francis in the country. So I chose to discuss the virtue of which the People’s Pope is known. Humility.

Pope Francis is known to have plenty of humility. Humility to him means spending time with those people we find hard to live with, those we probably like the least. He denounced self-importance when he preferred a modest two-room residence to a grand papal apartment on Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, when he waited in line with the rest of employees at the Vatican’s canteen, and when he gave up his chauffeur and started taking the bus to work.

When we speak of humility according to Pope’s examples, we can’t help but sound religious, preaching about the teaching of the church. Why not, humility is the mother of all virtues, the most important lessons Jesus Christ imparted to his disciples and believers down to all of us present-day Christians. We’ve learned in the bible that God cannot work on us if we are proud.

Humility came from the Latin humus meaning “earth,” or literary “on the ground.” And to St. Thomas Aquinas, humility “consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior.” This is consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church that humility “in a higher and ethical sense is that by which a man has a modest estimate of his own worth, and submits himself to others.” 

CLASS '89 HIGH SCHOOL REUNION

WE were one in singing “Farewell” a ballad (a favorite graduation song during our time) by Bagets star Raymond Lauchengco, and befittingly, we said goodbye to our beloved high school, our teachers, BFFs, and the rest of our schoolmates.

For the Class of '89 of Narvacan National Central High School, it was the end of our young lives filled with emotions and excitements, our seatmates, groupmates, crushes, the JS proms, extra-curricular activities, and the music we played during school programs. The friendships that officially began four years earlier marked its end, and times ahead of us would test our commitment to stay in touch after graduation.

Right after high school we went separate ways. While most of our classmates in Acacia section trooped to Manila or Baguio for college, I stayed in Ilocos with Romano Peralta, Gilda Damayo, Mayrene Pintado, Joan Cauton, Jerry Cabanit and Carolina Filarca; we enrolled and finished college at the University of Northern Philippines in Vigan.

A LETTER TO MOTHER

Dear Inang,

I’m sorry this comes late for Mother’s Day. During that day, I couldn’t write a single note for you. I tried, but all I could remember was that morning in the kitchen a month before.

It was the most poignant scene, the one I could easily remember; though at that time, I didn’t realize its effect on me. And I think of it now, like a reader flipping through pages of an old photo album, turning back to that event in just one glance.

It was the morning I arrived with my brother and two sisters from the hospital in San Fernando. Tatang, whom we fetched with a hired ambulance, was lying lifeless, now half covered with blanket on the wooden bed at the sala. While everyone around me was crying and groaning, I was frozen from where I stood. And my heart was in ecstatic pain.

5 YEARS OF FACEBOOKING

IT was December 22, 2008 when I opened my Facebook account, upon the invitation of Arlyn, a classmate in law school, or more than four years after Mark Zuckerberg and some classmates first introduced this online social networking service to their fellow Harvard students.  

A day after my name and ID photo cropped up in blue and white corner of the cyberspace, my cousin Danny Cadorna, whom I haven't seen since he left for Japan in 1994, sent me my first ever friend request. Then another relative, a friend, a former classmate, a coworker, and even a stranger wanted me to be in their list of friends.

They are saying that most of the people who know how to use a computer and Internet have a profile on Facebook. No wonder, in just a short span, more relatives, friends, classmates, coworkers and even strangers occupied my notifications for a friend request, and even a game request, a join-a-group request and a “like” request to whatever that page is.

GRIEF RECOVERY FICTIONS

READING books is helping me a lot to cope with grief. After my wife died, I kept on consuming books obsessively, in an attempt to have anything that would fill in the time where I could possibly think about my loss. Keeping myself busy days after my bereavement was a pain reliever. I was loneliest when I was not reading.

I read mostly fiction, and there was a time during this period that I scoured bookstore shelves and e-books lists for any helpful grief books, hoping that they would give me wisdom to help me better understand my experience, and that they could speak to me on a personal level in the quiet solitude of my darkest days. A kind of a lifeline to carry around.

But I got no success, or perhaps I didn’t search well. I’m not the religious type of a person, and I’m not so much into reading inspirational books, though I have read a few of them.