WIDOWER

WEEKS AFTER my wife died of breast cancer at the age of 38 last August, I remember walking in a daze into the Social Security System office in downtown Manila to file for funeral benefits. Because I arrived late, a long queue of anxious people was already waiting for their turn at the counter. A small group nearby drew me into their curious conversation; two of them were widows in their fifties, while the men were either retirees filing for pensions or younger individuals applying for sickness benefits. I didn’t meet a single husband like myself in that small gathering who had just lost his wife.

It was there that I heard a chorus of opinions regarding my situation: “Batang-bata ka pa para maging biyudo” (You’re too young to be a widower).

I tried to process the weight of those words: "batang-bata" (very young) and "biyudo" (widower). While the first term was true relative to the retirees and older widows, the second word stung. Leaving the cramped building, I found myself shaking off a heavy stupor, trying to contemplate the word "biyudo"—so clear and factual—as the new category of my civil status. I now belong to the thousands of Filipinos thrust into this reality every year, forced to learn how to cope alone after years of sharing a life with a partner. Yet, being a widower and a single father at my age is a rare circumstance. An American survey reveals that widows outnumber widowers by nearly five to one. During the wake, a cousin even remarked that while our enormous clan has several widows, it had never had a widower. By her records, I am the first.

An aunt and a grandaunt, both widows living abroad, called me on separate occasions to offer comforting words. However, they could only speak from their own experiences as women and mothers who had lost their partners. They only had hypotheses on how a male homo sapiens would navigate losing his life’s mate. While my widowed relatives spoke of feeling abandoned or deserted, I felt as though I had lost a massive chunk of myself. I saw myself as an incomplete human being, suddenly incapable of basic things like managing a household and caring for my three children.

My primary source of inspiration and comfort had vanished without warning, leaving me with the harrowing reality that I may have another 30 or more years left in this world without my partner.

I am currently in my final semester of law school, with final exams scheduled for next month. At the time of my wife's death and the ensuing wake, I was supposed to take my mid-term exams. Missing those tests, combined with incurring more absences than most subjects allowed, initially drove me to file for a leave of absence—or perhaps to quit law school altogether. Without the stubborn encouragement of my classmates, I might never have gone back.

My wife had always been my anchor. When I failed during my first attempt at law school, she lifted me up, supporting me even more when I transferred to another institution. Without her, I felt a sudden loss of direction, as if I were floating in an uncharted sea without a sail. I mourn not only for the spouse I lost, but also for the future we were supposed to build together.

My classmates and friends see me "acting normal again," but the moment I am alone, the grief returns with full force. No matter how hard I try to regain control of my life—carrying out normal routines for my children's benefit and catching up on lessons for the final exams—I am still plagued by numbness and denial. Grief does not magically dissipate. My concentration remains broken and my focus narrow.

Sometimes, I am racked with guilt, regretting the poor choices I made. I even blame myself for her death. I tell myself I shouldn't have allowed her to seek alternative cures outside of standard medical intervention. I should have been firmer in forcing her to undergo surgery at the earlier stages of her illness. I should have done more to dispel her fear of chemotherapy. I should have stopped law school to spend more time with her, even though she would never have allowed it. Instead, I felt enfeebled by our lack of financial resources and blinded by the shared ambitions we chased. I lacked the ability to rescue her, to be her great protector.

Fortunately, some friends and relatives have surrounded me with empathetic eyes, kind offers of support, and encouraging messages on Facebook and text. They have been a lifeline in my most desperate moments. Some advise me to engage in active coping strategies like work, sports, or dedicating all my time to the kids. Others are candid enough to suggest that I let go and find a new partner immediately.

That last piece of advice is something I am nowhere near ready to consider. I do not want to pursue a new relationship simply because I am lonely and miss the affection of my late wife. I refuse to involve myself with someone else before I am emotionally whole. Truthfully, I am not even sure if I will ever remarry.

For now, I prefer to be alone with my thoughts, reflecting on ways to navigate this new life. I have to rebuild—one small block at a time—just as psychologists advise those in deep grief. For a start, my focus must be on my children's well-being. I need to help them cope and reassure them that, despite our immense loss, we can eventually find a routine and move forward.

I am still figuring out how well they are recovering from this crisis. Dudoy recently won the gold medal in a district-wide spelling contest for private schools in Bulacan. Eya maintained her first-place ranking for the first grading period. N-yel, though his school rank dropped slightly, has become highly active in a Christian youth organization. These seem like good signs, but I know I must remain on guard, especially with the Christmas season approaching.

And thank goodness for books. I have always found reading to be deeply therapeutic. It kept me sane before and during my wife's illness, and it saves me now, at my lowest ebb, two months after her passing. I have bought piles of books, mostly secondhand titles from Booksale, and I squeeze reading into every free moment I have. I keep myself entirely buried in the printed word, almost out of a fear that if I run out of pages, I will run out of sanity.

Alongside reading, I have returned to blogging. I stopped posting here a little over a year ago, around the time my wife's condition began to deteriorate. I am reviving this blog to document my road to recovery. It is a space to express my thoughts, no matter how random or trivial they may seem. I love to write as much as I love to read, and writing has a uniquely calming effect. In fact, simply putting this article together has given me a rare, exhilarating sense of relief.

Bonding with my kids at EDSA Shangri-la Hotel

A PHOTOGRAPHER’S ART

DURING my wife’s wake, I firmly decided not to take pictures of anything that happened. I did not want to see images that would vividly remind me of the excruciating pain of losing her, especially since every heartbreaking moment was already permanently stuck in my memory box.

My sudden indifference to capturing every part of this reality was, I think, entirely understandable. Looking at pictures from the wake would only stall my recovery from this tragic episode of my life.

I remembered, however, that during the wake of my sister-in-law’s husband back in May 2009, I had eagerly volunteered to handle the photography from the wake all the way to the funeral. I even compiled those photographs and video clips into a moving, twenty-minute memorial tribute video. At the time, I had no real concept of how my sister-in-law—my late wife’s elder sister—felt when she looked at those photos or watched that video a few days after the funeral. The raw memories of their grief were permanently hardwired into those digital episodes I captured with my basic Kodak Easyshare camera. Would those downloadable memories help a family heal from the most sorrowful event of their lives? Looking back now, I seriously doubt it.

Yet, on the third day of my wife’s wake, I ended up brushing aside my resolve to keep the cameras away. That was the moment my kumpare and close friend, Ricky Canta, arrived at the wake and volunteered to document the funeral.

How could I possibly say no? Ricky is an extraordinary friend. He had been the official photographer for Citylife magazine during the days when I worked there as an assistant editor. My wife, Rosalie, was the publication's circulation clerk, and the three of us naturally became a tight-knit trio. Ricky is a tall, mild-mannered man with an infectious, subtle sense of humor. He was in his thirties back then and married with three kids. The magazine gig was just a part-time job for him, as he was principally a professional event photographer. But in between assignments, he would hang out in the press room with us until the magazine was completely put to bed. Following those exhausting production stretches, we would go out to unwind at a local bar in Caloocan or Quezon City—a well-earned treat courtesy of our tireless editor, Joe Bautista.

Unsurprisingly, when Rosalie and I decided to get married in 1996—just a few short months after meeting at the publication—Ricky was our unanimous choice to be our official wedding photographer. He generously refused to charge a single centavo for his services. A year later, he officially became my kumpare when he stood as the godfather to my firstborn child, a baptismal ceremony that he also lovingly covered.

Rosalie resigned from the publication six months after our wedding, and when the magazine folded a year later, Ricky went his own way, establishing a successful photography business in Cavite. I eventually lost touch with him. But thanks to Facebook, we managed to renew our connection after more than a decade of silence. He only learned of Rosalie’s passing from a status update I posted two days after her death.

Ricky arrived at the wake barely an hour before midnight, still visibly reeling and unable to comprehend what had happened to her. Before he stepped out, he told me that he would take full charge of the photography during the funeral—completely free of charge. I simply said, "Yes, and thank you," but on one strict condition: he was not to take any close-up shots of my wife inside the coffin.

In total, Ricky captured 682 individual shots over the course of the funeral, spanning from the quiet early morning hours before the necrological Mass to the final parting of the guests at the cemetery gates. It is a staggering volume of photographs—sad, poignant, and heavy images now preserved on a single DVD-R.

According to the celebrated American author Eudora Welty, a good snapshot stops a moment from running away. They stay, and in these particular snapshots captured by Ricky, the raw emotion refuses to fade. But upon a second look, these photographs are clearly the work of a true artist. The frames are a full, unfiltered expression of what the photographer felt about his subject. They were drawn from a deep reservoir of inspiration, rattled only by a profound grief of his own; I even caught him fighting back tears as he adjusted his angles and focused his lens.

I might choose to place the title "Grief" over this specific collection of samples, because that is exactly what they embody. Slowly, I am choosing to forget the lingering pang of unease that those painful memories evoke. In a way, the harsh reality is beside the point now—the images are all that matter.