FIRST VISIT

I VISITED Manila South Cemetery for the first time since the funeral, a little less than three months ago.

I went there on Sunday, October 30—two days ahead of the nationwide commemoration for the dead on undas (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day). I brought my three children, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law along. I intentionally wanted to avoid the mad rush of the crowds, the festive atmosphere, and the maddening commercialization that typically takes over the memorial holidays.

It was a beautiful afternoon, bright and windy, standing in stark contrast to the gloomy, dark, and rain-soaked day of her funeral. Yet, the moment I stepped up to her grave, I felt a familiar weight, as if we were putting her to rest all over again. The overarching grief, the sudden triggers, and the deep nostalgia were all painfully present.

But unlike the agonizing months right after her passing, I did not allow myself to be consumed by a paroxysm of grief. My eyes remained dry. It felt strange—almost surreal, as if it weren't actually happening—but I knew I had to accept it. It is just like the way I must now accept all the new, harsh realities that have entered my life. There is no more room for self-pity or misery—at least, if I can help it.

I did not come to my wife’s grave merely to mourn her loss, but to communicate with her. Visiting and speaking to her silently reinforced the feeling that she is still very much alive inside my heart. It helped immensely to finally voice all the things I wished I had said during her long suffering, especially my lingering regret over my absolute helplessness to save her. Rosalie’s death had been so sudden and unexpected that I felt a pressing need to speak with her, to let the reality finally sink in, and to try to bury my deepest sadness right there in the graveyard.

I once read a story about a man who would carry a beach chair and a cup of coffee to the cemetery every single morning. He would sit by his wife's headstone, sip his coffee, and carry on a lengthy conversation with her. Some might think that sounds crazy, but the man had a wonderful purpose: he was giving himself an outlet to express his emotions within the quiet sanctuary of his grief.

While I knew I couldn't become like that man, I wanted to use this specific day—this very first visit—to tell my wife everything left unsaid. I repeated over and over in my mind how sorry I was, how much I loved her, and how deeply I missed her.

Staring blankly at the somber headstone etched with her name, I could feel her presence near the family plot she now shares with her father and other departed relatives. I desperately wanted to believe that she actually heard those unspoken words. I wanted to believe that she is watching over me and our children—not just during this fleeting visit, but wherever we go and whenever she crosses our minds.

Cemetery visits are a public manifestation of remembrance. It is a necessary ritual to draw out and express your grief, showing the world how much a family misses a loved one, not just on a designated holiday but every single day of their lives. Standing there among the headstones, a few lines from a popular poem by Robert Frost, "In a Disused Graveyard," drifted into my mind:

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.

Yes, the living will always return to honor their faithful departed, even long after they are gone. No one is truly buried if they remain alive in the memories of those who loved them.

The graveyard, often viewed as a grim metaphor for a final stop or the absolute end of everything, also functions as an everlasting reminder to the living. It reminds us that we are not immortal. In the fullness of time, we too will join our loved ones in the very same earth.

It makes me wonder: How long does remembrance last after you yourself have died? Who will remember my wife once I am gone, and after all our children and relatives have eventually left this life behind, too? Will her final resting place eventually become truly "disused"? Or is it only then, when the last person who remembers passes away, that Death finally consigns the forgotten to absolute oblivion?

We stayed at the cemetery for a little over two hours, leaving just as the last stick of our ceremonial candles began to dim its light. We left the melted wax and the fresh flowers behind on the stone, but we walked out the gates carrying the exact same love for my wife, and the exact same beautiful memories of the love she had always given us.

LUCKLESS CHARMS

HONESTLY, I do not believe in lucky charms, amulets, or superstitions hinged on fate. Yet, right now, I carry a pair of "lucky charms" tucked safely inside my wallet.

They are two miniature animal figures crafted from paper—green art paper origamis of a fish and a bird, made personally by my son, Nathaniel, as a simple present for my birthday last September. He handed them to me with a note bearing this message:

“According to Japanese tradition, an origami heron or bird means long life, while the fish means money and wealth. Put the fish in your wallet always.”

Just as he wished, I thrust them into my leather wallet, and they have stayed there ever since. I keep them not because I expect good fortune, but for their immense sentimental value—the way anyone anchors themselves to a special gift from a special person.

I do not focus on his heart-tugging wish for my longevity and wealth, but rather on what he was feeling and thinking about me after his mother’s death. There is no question that my son has a deep insight into my profound loss, or perhaps he sees me now as a man running completely out of luck. To him, I must look like a Superman suddenly brought down by kryptonite, a Samson who has lost his seven locks, or a Jedi stripped of the Force, suffering through a relentless series of setbacks.

I need help so badly. I must hang on no matter what, overcoming everything from mighty odds to terrible misfortune and mind-boggling tragedy, if only to become my son’s hero once again. That will take a tremendous amount of heroic guts, of course. My son is more than willing to help me fight that battle with his gift of good luck.

Before the tragedy upended our lives, people were always emphatic about the luck our family possessed—specifically, how happy and complete we were. I remember them constantly saying that we were so blessed. They told me I was lucky for having a steady job, a pretty wife, and three bright kids. They said we were lucky with the house we live in right now, a fact supposedly verified by a friend of my in-laws from Malate who visited us. This woman was widely believed to possess a "third eye" and to be gifted with unusual spiritual insight.

The plump, mysterious woman told me that there were no bad spirits or elementals residing within our walls; instead, she claimed we merely shared the property with a harmless gang of white duwendes (elves) occupying a quiet corner of the front yard. A former nanny of my daughter would later attribute these very elves to the sudden stroke of luck that brought about a swift recovery in our finances after we were swindled by unscrupulous real estate agents—and why, after our pricey mistakes, we managed to secure our own house with a clean title. It might not be true, but who am I to dismiss another person's comfort?

In fact, my late wife grew up in a household that believed implicitly in luck, and like most Filipino families—including my own kin back in Ilocos—theirs was highly prone to idiosyncratic superstitions. I have never had a problem with folk beliefs, provided they do my family no harm. So, when our family transferred to our new home in Bulacan almost ten years ago, I willingly allowed myself to participate in the little rituals associated with the move. I carried in a jar of salt, a bottle of water, and a cup of rice before we permitted a single piece of furniture to cross the threshold.

Going even further back into the past, on our wedding day, my wife and I followed almost every superstition dictated by our elders to secure good luck for our future, going far beyond the traditional requirements of the Catholic Church. Otherwise, the old folks warned us, some terrible misfortune would befall our marriage.

Deep inside, I suppose I quietly joined the ranks of those who desperately need to believe in luck. I harbored a clandestine hope that something beautiful might happen to our marriage and our family with every bit of good fortune I could gather.

My wife even kept a small collection of "charms" during the final few years of her life: a religious medallion, a withered rose petal from a blessed shrine, a small cloth touched to the blood of a saint, a holy stampita, a prayer booklet containing a piece of cloth from an image of the Black Nazarene, and an esoteric symbol of an eye trapped inside a triangle. She likely kept them for the protection they promised, the miracles they were meant to evoke, or simply for sentimental reasons.

But she died just the same.

A recurring question that haunts my grieving mind as I look for answers in the wake of her death is why these lucky charms, or these desperate incantations for miracles, failed to help her at all. Now that my wife is gone after almost fifteen years of marriage, leaving our family broken and incomplete, does it mean that our luck has expired? Were we never truly lucky to begin with, in spite of all the rituals, amulets, and thingamajigs involved in trying to manufacture good fortune? Is it simply bad luck that forces us to suffer this way?

Just days before my wife’s passing, my mother told me an unsettling story. She had solicited the opinion of a man in our hometown in Ilocos who was believed to possess an otherworldly power against witchcraft. He claimed that two envious women from the Visayas had actively gone to a mangkukulam (witch) to fatally harm my wife. I did know a couple, both originally from the Visayas, who harbored a strange envy toward my wife for reasons known only to them. Yet, I am simply not the kind of person who can easily buy into an implausible report of sorcery, even when it comes directly from my own mother.

Putting witchery or black magic into the picture is entirely beside the point. I am talking about malas—the heavy, suffocating negativity that has befallen us. Still, I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that our tragic fate was entirely preordained, or that we must simply sit back and wait for it to unfold. I refuse to view a man the way the ancient Greek tragedians did: as a helpless creature swept along blindly by destiny, stripped of the right to whine, pity himself, or complain about unpredictable forces.

My wife’s devotion to the Virgin Mary and, toward the end, to the Divine Mercy was unquestionable. She was a deeply prayerful person, especially during the final, agonizing stages of her illness. I could feel her fierce resolve to live a little longer for our sakes; she held onto her faith with everything she had left. But somehow, God must have known what was genuinely best for her soul.

I am nowhere near as religious as my wife was, but I have always believed in a Supreme Being. Luck had absolutely nothing to do with what He chose to do with us.

Now, whenever I look at the delicate green origamis resting in my wallet, they remind me of the profound thoughtfulness of my son and my absolute commitment to guide him and his siblings through their own inexplicable grief. They no longer represent paper charms designed to bring wealth or long life. I believe that it is only through earnest prayer that I will be able to invite a remarkable confluence of elements to work together for the healing of our family.

What matters is not the tragedy itself, but how I choose to respond to it. Therefore, with or without a lucky charm, I must forge a way to build a better life for my family.

Just wish me luck, if you will!

CINQUAINS

august night at p.g.h.

m.d.’s,

carers, interns,

zookeepers and vultures

in a labyrinth of melding

colors.

zombies,

whirling about;

my world, peripheral,

like zebra stripes off a huge wall:

lifeless.

framed sky

abysmal black

blank stares, Janus-faced fate,

in calloused hands with flawless gowns

amen.

thin line:

vanishing twitch…

green strip on black, soundless!

a pink-less rose, withered and stiff

aground.

*  * *

I first encountered cinquains during my college days, and writing these felt like a rediscovery or a revisit of this relatively quaint poetic format. For those who are unfamiliar with this style, a cinquain is a class of poetic forms that employs a five-line pattern, quite similar to the Japanese tanka.

The specific style I used here is the modern version invented by American poet Adelaide Crapsey. This format utilizes exactly 22 syllables distributed across five lines in a strict 2-4-6-8-2 pattern.

I have always used writing as a way to capture fleeting snippets of verse. The activity, albeit brief and spontaneous, serves as an excellent source of freedom and a tamed arena for releasing deep internal tensions. When inspiration strikes, I usually scribble just a line or two that relates personally to my experiences or emotions at that exact moment. My lines do not necessarily employ conventional poetic meter or rigid rhyme schemes; instead, they simply speak of things that I am extremely interested in or passionate about.

However, this was my very first attempt at writing structured cinquains.

The four stanzas above are the products of random thoughts originally typed into my cellphone and saved as SMS drafts during my wife’s two-week confinement before her death at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) in Manila, as well as the succeeding days I spent wandering the hospital corridors to settle important documents.

These fragments are stray thoughts captured on separate occasions. I simply let the words flow in the moment, and I went back to do a couple of structural drafts after the fog began to clear. It was during that process that I discovered some of my raw lines were already remarkably close to the traditional cinquain format. I only had to revise them slightly, selecting this specific set of four to piece together a single, cohesive narrative arc.

So, there they are. I invite you to look closely at how these seemingly unrelated words knit together to form a stark, clinical imagery. They are almost too brief for a longer commentary.