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.

ON REWRITING

‘I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ ~ James Michener

REWRITING makes the difference between good writing and poor writing. James Michener and other great writers had given us some good reminders on the importance of rewriting. So whenever I felt dissatisfied with my writing style or couldn’t finish a story or an article, their advice on rewriting comes to me like fresh air into my humid desk.

Now every time I open my document, I would edit here and there and try to take note of things I want to change. But if there's no progress at all, then I rewrite and, when necessary, change almost everything in the document. As one author says, it is perfectly okay to write garbage, as long as you edit brilliantly.

It’s a big advantage living when easy-to-use computers and word processing software are readily available to every writer, and they have simplified immensely my rewriting task. I couldn’t imagine how much Michener labored with his typewriter and painstakingly writing and rewriting long notes to complete drafts for his manuscripts before releasing the final version to his publisher. According to Michener, he went very slowly and needed constant revision in writing his best-selling historical fiction Hawaii. He had to type about three million words to only trim down to about half a million in the final version for another round of draft writing.

SUMMER CINQUAINS

i crossed 

the valley bridge;

found and lost her again,

and left the summers of my heart

behind.

that was

a bright full day;

saw her, gone forever,

and threw my own sweet monsoon dreams

away.

the next bridge...

some other place,

other space, how and where?

i'll just cross the next one when i--

get there.

THE resort in Gozaga town in Cagayan is aptly called STR or Sirok ti Rangtay (Under the Bridge). You have to pass under the bridge to reach the bank where a picnic area and a newly built hotel-type rooms for overnight visitors are found.  

LIFE IS A GINEBRA GAME-WINNING PLAY

“DAD, can we watch this Ginebra game again in Araneta next week?” my teenage son Nathaniel asked me one night. I was working on my laptop for my article to a local literary magazine. He knew I don’t like to be disturbed when I was doing that in my room but, hey, it’s about basketball. And I love basketball.

Nathaniel is as crazy as some boys of his age about the sports. He loves to play hustle games with his neighbor friends at an uncovered court in our subdivision, trying the best way he can to play like his idol Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics. And he is also a fan of Philippine basketball, the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) and even the collegiate leagues.

His love for the game heightened when his aunt bought him his own basketball, and I think it was in the same year when I brought him to a PBA rookie draft at Robinson’s Place in Ermita, Manila and he got the chance to meet in person some of his favorite PBA players. I’m sure he enjoyed the experience so much that in the rookie draft the following year, he went by himself (I had a busy schedule at work then) to the same venue and watched how some of his favorite collegiate playmakers, such as Calvin Abueva and Chris Tiu, were drafted to the professional league.

WRITING LETTERS IN A JOURNAL

IT'S true, and it’s a shame, that most people don’t write letters anymore. They would rather express their feelings through text messaging, social media forums, blogs, or Facebook posts. Exchanges or interactions become faceless or impersonal or temporary. And very few, if none at all, had bothered to regard the power and longevity of written words.

Years ago, whenever there’s a chance to talk to their children, people were sometimes disappointed because they didn’t know how to communicate exactly what they wanted to. So they resort to letters. Some hand-written letters were often so beautifully composed and simply inspiring that people love to keep them in their personal files. Love letters, or friendly letters, or letters of a parent to his or her child, always carry sweet reminders of the feelings that had long been gone.

PINSAL FALLS

THIS blog about my trip to Pinsal Falls has long been overdue. My first and only visit to the tallest, if not the most beautiful waterfall in Ilocos, was way back in December 2011. Some of my snapshots of the place, now with a good number of likes and comments, had been in my Facebook’s Timeline photos for quite some time now. But with my recent trip to Cambugahay Falls in Lazi, Siquijor early this month and to Balite Falls in Amadeo, Cavite in April last year, I cannot help but compare these two falls with Pinsal Falls.

It’s an easy verdict for me: Pinsal Falls certainly stands above the two, not only because of its size but also because of its rocky landscape and the challenges it offers, a number of other interesting natural features of the area, and its accessibility (it’s approximately 30 minutes ride from the town proper).

Now, with the advent of summer, you might think of a perfect getaway for your barkada or family, and Pinsal Falls may be a good place to go. Having visited the place myself, I can assure you that a summer break to this place gives you some fun climbing, picnic, swimming, and exploring.

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK NUT

To-be read books, all second-hand 

MY love affair with books did not start until I was 13. I was a first year student of a private school in the poblacion (Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur), and it was my first time to see a real library. I was from the barrio and I could just count with my fingers the books that I had read, and suddenly I was in a place surrounded by an impressive collection of books, a wide variety of titles, stacked up neatly in series of shelves and glass cabinets.

I knew right then what I really wanted to do, and that was to read. Soon, I was in the library devouring fantastic stories, children’s fiction, anthologies, encyclopedias, adventures and history, to the point that I had been forgetting to review for exams and submit my school projects.

I become a compulsive reader. I would spend most of my vacant time in the library. There were just too many books to read. That started my most dearly cherished ambition to live in a big house with my own private library. I even had this secret wish to stay in prison surrounded by lots of books to read, just like the young lawyer in Anton Chekhov’s “The Bet,” who spent, because of a crazy bet, 15 years of solitary confinement reading books, from novels with a complicated love plot, sensational stories, to volumes on languages, philosophy, history, and religion, thus educating himself.  

A “NEW NORMAL” HOLIDAY

Christmas Tree 2010

I DID not display any Christmas ornaments in my house this year, just like the last. And my kids were not asking me why. Only once did my nine-year-old daughter mention about putting up our old Christmas tree at its usual corner in the living room, but it was not a question of why I wasn’t doing it, but it was rather a reminder, or maybe a command, for me to obey.

It was just a week before December and Roseya thought I’ve easily forgotten what our family has loved doing at this time of the year. She missed the whole family tradition of preparing for Christmas, such as decorating the tree while playing Christmas CD’s—Paskong Pinoy and Jose Mari Chan’s Christmas album were all-time favorites. It was a wonderful time together as a family. She has been looking forward to setting up the little star or an angel on top of the tree, all decked out in its Christmas finery.

MY PEN PAL

“PEN PALS“ maybe a strange term for the younger generations who have been living almost day to day with instant messaging, chat rooms, and social networking sites. To them, pen pals seem to come from a by-gone age. What do you need a pen for when you can reach your friends, old, new or potential friends, by just a click of the mouse?

As the term suggests, pen pals are two people, usually from different places, originally strangers, who regularly exchange friendly letters, mostly handwritten, and pictures with corny dedications at the back. The relationship would reach a major turning point when one would eventually travel across the distance to finally meet the other. They may fall for each other, that is, when physical attraction overpowers the emotional attraction they may have intimated on scented stationery. Or like with any friendship in life, they remain pen pals for only a short time. They would get to the point in their lives where they have too many things to take care of.

Today, however, there is an Internet version of the same thing. It still has its original meaning of remote friends in different parts of the world who write to each other through e-mails or private messages on social networking sites. The “pen” now means the electronically written communication. There are also pen pal sites for many single males or females to meet their “pals” online and later set up dates for themselves.

DAYBREAK

DURING a brief vacation in my hometown in Ilocos early this month, I forced myself to wake up before light just to see the familiar panorama of dawn in the barrio. Though I was sluggish after an eight-hour trip from Manila a day before, I braved the chilly air to watch the yellow strands of light above the mountain range to the east. I observed the breaking sun as if I had not seen it in so many years.

It’s easy to fall in love with the dawn. I always do. I would have my eyes transfixed to the radiating pink and faintly golden plumage of daybreak, like a beauteous lady smiling enticingly at you, or with rosy arms outstretched for a motherly embrace, dispelling any restlessness and grogginess of your tired soul.

It’s the kind of affection you miss so much, but sleepless nights and hectic obligations make you forget about her though. But the moment you try to reach her by the path of the night, you look east again and you’d find her as before.

There’s always this solemnity of her presence, when only the light moves, slowly from gray of a withering night to streaks of orange, and yellow and shaft of silver breaking from the clouds. And I can only have such lingering moment when I was in our old place in Nanguneg. Unlike in my house in a subdivision in Bulacan, where my view of the east is blocked by row of houses on elevated ground across the street, our house in the barrio would give me a clear view of that Homeric “rosy-fingered dawn.” 

5 BEST MEMOIRS THAT I’VE READ

I ENJOY reading books and read a lot. When I have this craving for reading, I succumb to whatever book that is available, so that qualifies me as a bookworm. My choice of books is eclectic, so I read everything that piques my interest.

I have my preferences, though, as an order of priority whenever I have given so many choices at one time: historical novels, award-winning books, and books that are made into outstanding movies.

But lately, reading narrative non-fictions, or first-person accounts that read almost like a novel, is an added delight. I’m always thrilled by personal truths written not only by famous writers, thinkers, and celebrities, but also by ordinary persons who examine themselves as they navigate through life, or ones written by those who can honestly talk about themselves in a purposeful way. And I am equally amazed by those who mythicize themselves, unraveling their exploits or histories as only they know them, and by those who start as a total no-gooder, but ends up as a total expert.

I am referring to memoir, which is different from an autobiography, though both words are sometimes used interchangeably. Unlike autobiography that is laden with dates and facts of the author’s entire life, a memoir does not delve too much into life details. It only provides a record not so much bound with timelines but of a random set of events that occurred and influenced a person’s life.

According to some authors, a memoir is a self-written account of selected events and phases in life that stands out in the memories of a person. It is a true story with a real-life plot, characters, setting, a couple of sub-plots, focusing on the part of the writer’s past that has universal appeal. It should be interesting in itself, as a novel might be.

The best memoirs, for me, should contain witty, interesting short stories and feelings or events that I can relate to in my own life. It should follow a story line or compile several anecdotes, such documents of honest thoughts, with a related theme, touching a subject that is either transformational or inspirational. It should have some kind of emotional impact that an ordinary reader like me should care. And finally, the writing has to be good.

There are five captivating and awesome memoirs I have read over the past few years. I picked up these memoirs because I believe they have permanently changed somehow the way I think about certain things, and gave me the idea that all lives worth living are interesting to read.

My list here was arranged in the order when I read them.

1.      Out of Africa by Isak Denisen

      When I first got hold of the book, I thought it was a novel, which is the basis of the Oscar Award winning movie of the same title   starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. But  the book is actually   a memoir written by a Danish baroness (real name: Karen von Blixen) who took over the management of a coffee plantation on her own in Kenya after she and her unfaithful husband divorced. It’s a vivid snapshot of her life in Africa, or rather a lyrical expression  of her love to the wonderful people and nature that touched her life there. But more than that, I was touched by her relationship (though she did not clearly define in the book the nature of such romance) with Denys Finch Hatton, the British farmer and hunter whom she met in the country. The pair had a tender affair, but not that of a “permanent partnership” that Blixen would have loved to happen. Hatton would use Blixen’s farm as his home base. And they would fly over her farm and some parts of Africa using Hatton’s biplane. The relationship ended when Hatton died in a plane crash. I feel for Blixen in her anguish and infinite longing, for the loss of a person she adored so much like a soul mate, and the loss of the coffee farm due to low yields. The book is a slow read; for it’s also an account on the charm, the majesty, the beauty of the vast continent, and the culture of the tribes therein; but it’s definitely a worthwhile read. 

2.      One L by Scott Turow

This is a journal-like narrative by Scott Turow, telling his experience as a first-year student at Harvard Law School where freshmen are dubbed One Ls. I first heard about this book when it was recommended by one of our speakers during our orientation as first year law students in a premier university. But I was only able to read it when I  was already in third year, or after I got kicked out and transferred to another school. Still, it was not a totally waste of time. I came to understand where I failed or what I lacked in my freshman year. I realized that first year in law school is the most critical in the life of a lawyer. Early on, you have to survive the terrors, depressions, hazing, compulsive work (e.g. reading up to 20 cases for a two-hour long recitation in class!), and very intimidating professors. One memorable account in the book is one that deals with the Socratic method of lecturing, where there were no clear answers. It was a familiar experience in my first school to be grilled with questions by the professor using that method. I suffered anxiety over a single exam that may determine my future in law school. The book narrates not only about law school but about being human in an intense, often grueling, situation. It is a must-read for first-year law students and law school applicants, or by anyone who has ever contemplated going to law school. 
                                                          

3.      I Know the Caged Bird Sing by Maya Angelou

       I didn’t hear about Maya Angelou until she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of US President Bill Clinton in 1993. So when I read her memoir more than 15 years later, I was amazed at the kind of life    she had endured and how she overcame her inferiority complex, trauma and racism, to become what she is now, a self-possessed, dignified young woman, and a multi-awarded poet and author, and playwright. I have read    fictions and stories about the origin of slavery of Negroes in America, the courage of black men and women, proud and strong under oppressive circumstances, and issues of rape, molestation, lynching and racism in their quest for independence and personal dignity. I read them from Alex Haley’s Roots, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Richard Wright’s Native Son to name a few. And Angelou’s memoir covers topics common to these stories, particularly the era following the civil rights movements. I was no longer shocked and saddened by them. But it was a new experience reading this autobiographical story, written in the perspective of a young girl, as a three-year old then up to her early teens in a small, rural community during the 1930s. I admire her strength, her candor, poignancy and grace, all told in her powerful language, vivid scenery and emotions. It is a good book but not recommended for young readers.  

    

4.      Red Azalea by Anchee Min

My love for historical fiction leads me to Katherine, a novel about a Chinese girl and a seductive American teacher,  and aroused my curiosity of what was life in Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution, and to Anchee Min, the author of  the book. And this has inspired me to pick up Red Azalea, her honest and frightening account under the shadow of Mao. It is her own story of inner strength and courage as she grew up in the rigid context of Communism, and living up with ideology and gender issues, sex, suicide, humiliation and political subterfuge. The drama unfolds like the convoluted plot of a telenovela. As a child, she was taught to be a good communist and was sent to a labor camp to work in the rice fields. Consistent with Communist dogma against any type of individualism or expression of emotions, communal laborers like her were forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased. She entered, however, into a secret love affair with her female supervisor at the labor camp. Later on, she was selected to be trained as an actress for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas. But Mao died before the film was completed, and Madame Mao was sentenced to death. It was then that Min realized that she was just a victim to the craziness of the culture like anyone else in her country, and that life might be better elsewhere. With the help of a friend, she left China for America. It is an interesting book.

5.      Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

      I have so little knowledge about the book or its author when   I picked it up in a bookstore. Without the gilded seal bearing “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” on its cover, I wouldn’t have taken a second look, and wouldn’t have the chance to experience glorifying this gem of a book. This is an honest narration of a young Irish-American boy, crushed under the oppressive conditions of impoverished childhood, heartbreaking struggles with his father’s alcoholism, and his mother’s attempts to keep the family intact, the death of three of his siblings, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, but narrated by him with eloquence and remarkable forgiveness, and in astounding humor and compassion. That’s a big wow for me. The story happened in the Depression-era in New York and the war years in Ireland, where the family moved after they left America. The story, seen through the eyes of the author’s younger self, makes you laugh and cry with his heartbreaks and near-starvation, and keeps you rooting for his family’s survival. It highlights abject poverty and unemployment, those devastating conditions faced by millions around the world, but as a whole, it tells a story of hope and triumph rather than one of misery. Deserving of my five stars.

Just to round up my top ten, I must also confess an appreciation for the following autobiographical books: From Barrio to Senado by Juan M. Flavier, Nothing Is Impossible by Christopher Reeve, The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier, America is in My Heart by Carlos Bulosan, and Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic.

I would love to write one of my own someday. I will definitely make one if only to help me make sense of my life, confront the truth, and provide myself new perspectives in life. But for now I just enjoy finding pieces of myself in other people’s lives revealed through their well-written memoirs.    

A LIFT FROM AN ANGEL

MY wife and our two-year-old son Nathaniel just came out of a children’s party at Jollibee along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City. It was the first week of August of 1999. The gray cloudy sky, cool heavy wind, and low rumble in mid-afternoon presaged rain.

“It looks like rain, do you have umbrella?” asked Weng, my wife’s officemate and the mother of the birthday girl.

“No it won’t rain,” I replied as if I was that day’s weatherman.

  

“Yes, we have an umbrella,” my wife countered.

Instead of going home to Malate, Manila, we proceeded to Uncle Rolly’s house in Quezon City. My uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, had been asking us to visit them if we have time. So here now, we have this spare time after the party. My wife and I were also eager to see my uncle’s two lovely kids. It would only take one jeepney ride from Jollibee to his place in Project 3 anyway, and we might reach the place before the rain. If it would rain at all.

We arrived at my uncle’s rented studio-type apartment just in time for dinner and the drizzle. Nathaniel had fun playing with my uncle’s precocious children, Jap-Jap, 3, and Paula, 2. I think it was around 7 p.m. when the drizzle gained up strength, followed by wild gusts of wind. The strong rain grew even stronger, and it fell without letup for another hour.

I wouldn’t want to stay very late at night with my baby away from the safety of our home. My uncle would love to accommodate us, if we like to stay through the night, but when we decided to go home no matter what, he only allowed us to leave when the rain had stopped.

After more than an hour of continuous rain, the sky became quiet but the cold stormy breeze still lingered in the air. We waited for another hour without rain then we went out the house, bidding my uncle and his family goodbye. At the street corner, we caught a jeepney going to Quiapo. It’s almost 10 in the evening.

While our jeepney was traversing the busy street of Kamuning, the rain fell, this time harder and more fearsome. The rain drummed on the roof of the vehicle. The roads were covered with rain water in a short period of time. The traffic came at slow. We waited patiently amidst drastic rain, cool wind, and darkness.  

The driver made a shortcut to minor streets, yet we were still trapped along with other vehicles trying to evade the floods. Suddenly, we came to a dead stop, and he told us that it was very dangerous to drive any further. “I’m sorry, but you have to get out and walk,” he said, pointing out the sudden lull from the rain.

My family went out of the vehicle, and walked until we reached a corner of the road where we could see passenger jeepneys passing by. It’s not yet midnight, I thought we’d have no trouble getting a ride. After we waited in the corner for a while, a jeepney with only a few passengers pulled up and the driver asked where we were going. “Quiapo,” I said. He told us that with the floods, he was not sure if he could make it until that place, but he could just try.

So we hopped in. A big portion of Quezon Avenue ahead of us was already submerged with floodwaters. The driver made a shortcut to the road parallel to the main thoroughfare until we reach Sampaloc district in Manila.

The weather turned nasty in a split second. It began to rain again drastically. Our travel had become a long and tortuous wading through the flooded streets. Floods were nothing new to this densely-packed part of the city. Being drivers and commuters, living under the mercy of floodwaters during the rainy season, meant developing survival skills and prayerful spirit worthy of a survivalist.

The driver, just like the first one, saw the danger ahead and said that he wouldn’t want to push his luck. That means, we have to be on our own, go down the road, and brave that super-filthy flood with my small child in my arms. Wading through flood waters is dangerous. Flood water can contain hundreds of different chemicals, along with bacteria and other microorganisms that can cause disease and infection. And there’s that open manhole waiting for its victim. But I have no choice. 

We joined the remaining passengers as they alighted from the vehicle and went to the direction of España Blvd. There’s only a drizzle now, so my family had to huddle in my wife’s small umbrella as we groped our way to the nearest shed. 

Good thing, the drizzle stopped after about 15 minutes, giving us the chance to go on with the trek. Fortunately, the flood along the side of the street was only just as high as my ankle. From Dapitan Street, we waded toward the direction of an intersection going to España Blvd. I could see some vehicles traversing the street toward Quiapo. So I rather take my chances than have my family spend the night in the middle of the floodwaters.

The cold, dark night stretched dauntingly ahead. We were stranded at the corner of Blumentritt and España. We stayed in the corner, with Nathaniel in my arms, seemed heavier than before. There were only a few public vehicles braving the floodwater but none had stopped to take us in. Tricycle and pedicab drivers, taking advantage of the flood, offered their services to stranded commuters; while some men pushed stranded vehicles to higher grounds, for a fee, of course.

Then a dark blue SUV passed by with steady speed at first, but slowed down in front of us, then he stopped two or three meters away. Perhapsthe driver changed his mind to move on, then he backtracked very slowly. It stopped in front of us, and the driver slid down his tinted window.

“Where are you going?” asked the driver, a young man about thirty.

My wife told him we were waiting for a ride going to Malate.

“I am going to that direction, why don’t you hop in before it would rain again, well, if it’s OK with you?” he said. His welcoming smile eased my apprehension of a stranger.  

“I happened to see your young child, so I thought, he badly needs to be at home at this time,” he continued when we were already inside his vehicle, with our soaked pants and a dripping umbrella. My child was now asleep in my lap. 

The driver went on with his friendly chatter. He was on a hurry (yet he found time to stop and pick us up in the flood) to fetch his boss from an important meeting in a place near the US Embassy along Roxas Boulevard, and his boss might be worried by now. Just like the previous jeepney drivers, he made every shortcut that he would find, but unlike them, he didn’t stop at all.

As the SUV negotiated the swirling waters, I suddenly found myself praying to God and all the saints: to keep the car from conking out, and let us make it to higher ground. The speed was moderate and steady, and murky flood started creeping into the car. But the driver wasn’t worried at all. He told me that he’d used to this kind of flood and he had a full trust with his vehicle.

We reached the end of España, and there’s no more flood after the next street going all the way to the underpass connecting Quiapo. I knew that our ordeal was about to the end. We went ahead with normal speed going to Lawton, then to Roxas Blvd until we reached Kalaw Street.

We alighted, and thanked the man profusely. But our angel shrugged off our profuse thanks, and refused to accept any payment. In our haste to go home, we forgot to get his name. But I watched the car sped away, sending him a prayer for him to reach his boss safely and to his family after his work was done.

Whoever he is, I’m very thankful for all his effort. He went out of his way to help my family in a desperate situation, and perhaps, his only motivation is to help or to do an act of kindness when opportunity so provides. That man has done a very honorable act.

We made it safely home. We were blessed that August night in España to meet a nameless angel in the road. He saved us, especially my child, from spending the night in a flooded street.

WATERPROOF SPIRIT

I COME across once in a while pictures that snag my attention and really give me that good belly-laugh. Just like jokes, funny pictures can lift everyone's spirit, and are sure to divert the attention of some Facebook addicts, quite like me before, for a few seconds at least. And for that we should be grateful.

Everytime I scroll down my FB page, funny pictures would pop up like zombies of a popular video game, along with so many invites, unwelcomed tagging of images, and feel-good-for-me kind of posts. The Net is a highway of these sorts being thrown at you. But I tend to seek out more of these funny stuffs, almost becoming like a lifelong quest for me to find things that really make me laugh. I copied some of these funny pictures, from the witty to the outrageously funny, for my personal file (No, I don’t usually share or repost other FB user’s wall post). And I really found more every time I use the Net, and indeed they were just as good.

It’s not strange that most of these pictures are made by Filipinos, a known race in the planet that can easily have a good quick laugh despite the hardship of life. They can be about stupid government officials, about Manny Pacquiao, her mother Dionisia with her candid ways, sarcasm on daily life, and popular movies; and even those images that barely fit into the topic of the day, they still somehow find life on the Net, dipped in humor.

And just recently, during the intense and prolonged monsoon rain (now dubbed as “a storm with no name,” or simply habagat or southwest monsoon) that ravaged Metro Manila and nearby provinces, and while the closing of the 2012 Olympics in faraway London was about to end, this picture came out and began circulating around the Internet like virus.

Translation: You’re only a flood; I’m a Filipino.

Apparently, this serves as a proof of the Filipino’s unique ability to cope with just about anything. Three cheers for his sunny personality!

The Filipinos could withstand anything nature throws at them. A flood may be as high as their rooftops, almost a yearly or monthly occurrence in their place, anyway, or no matter how dire the situation is, the every resourceful and flexible Filipinos would just easily raise themselves above water. The Filipino, indeed, has acquired the “waterproof spirit”, a quality that impressed even Canadian singer Nelly Furtado in her recent visit to the country.

Now we can really understand why millions of us, even during a disaster, could still enjoy communicating with relatives and friends, sending jokes, particularly captured images of what is pretty fun, and ventilating their views on whatever strikes their fancy. And those photos that they circulate are also a big validation of the kind of Internet user the Filipinos are.

We Filipinos are known for our easy going attitude and good sense of humor which reflect strongly through the pictures that they Photoshop to suit their fun personality. And if there is one thing that can be a source of Olympic gold for the country, then it’s got to be their artistic bent of Photoshopping pictures, and their Usain Bolt-speed of sharing their LOL-worthy masterpieces and tagging and liking and tweeting them in worldwide web. Filipinos, a very social people despite their poverty, were born to entertain.

Before these waterproof-spirit-themed photos, Facebook and other social network pages are also abuzz with images depicting what makes the Philippines “more fun” using the tagline of the Department of Tourism latest campaign pitch “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.” This “Fun” theme did not escape some of Filipino netizens—so what do you expect?—as they take the idea to a new level, like using it to make fun of their situations during the intense rain and flooding in the country.

What makes these images stand out for me is the razor-sharp truth, as well as its perfectly timed theme (tayming na tayming, as we love to say in Filipino). They really drive the message home. Well, there is life to comedy in this country, after all, even after the death of Dolphy. Just look at these samples I gathered from the Net. Now if a picture is worth a thousand words then these photos are worth a thousand laughs.

There are some of our countrymen, however, who don’t agree or are really disappointed by this tag “Filipino waterproof spirit.” To them it is clear evidence that we are not a serious people. It manifests a weird culture in our midst: That we rather make fun and create jokes of our misfortunes than to think of a solution. It’s like saying “Since we do it very well, then we love doing it.” They bemoan the fact that we seldom hear an outrage or none at all about our pitiful condition, when in truth, much of what contributes to the devastation of the metropolis are the result of years of neglect and lack of foresight by our leaders, from Malacañang all the way to the barangay council halls. 

But for now, everyone would just love to find reasons to laugh. As they say, when the world gets really crazy, the Filipinos always find the need to watch comedy. Come hell or high water, nothing can take that smile or laugh (that malutong na tawa we always love to hear) away from them. They make light of it, shrugging off every disaster as another chapter in our sordid life.

I don’t think there’s problem seeing the smiling faces of Filipinos as they helped each other out. The government anyway has already expressed its concern to us, as it has done almost every year, and we hope our leader could see our vulnerability to natural calamities as reason to create a comprehensive drainage masterplan, and not just mere laughing matter.

Well, until next year then!

Images used in this post are all shared photos. Acknowledgement is due to their owners, creators, or original sources. 

A YEAR AFTER THE LOSS

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed  

TODAY is the first anniversary of my wife’s death. My wife of 14 years passed from this life exactly a year ago at PGH-Manila due to breast cancer.

The fateful scene in that August night is still fresh on my mind. Eight hours after I left my wife in her bed in the hospital, I received a text message from Joan, her niece, pleading me to go back to my wife’s bedside at the soonest possible time. I went to work that day because I knew she’s fine when I left her.

I knew right away that the day I feared so long has finally come.

Please, Lord, not now, I kept on praying while I hurtled out of the office up to the nearest bus stop. When I called up Joan again, her words were drowned by her sobs. I had to calm her down. She insisted that I should hurry up, assuring me though that her aunt is still breathing, as the doctors are trying all their best to keep her alive.

It was Friday, a day Jesus the Nazarene devotees flock to Quiapo church. There was a monstrous traffic along Quezon Boulevard, which is a major road midway to my route from my office in Quezon City to PGH in Ermita. I was stuck. In 5 or 10 minutes interval, I called Joan for update, trying hard to keep myself from crying.  

From my bus window I hold on my eyes to the opened doors of the church, where I had a glimpse of a number of devotees praying inside. There are so many of them packing the church every Friday, beseeching the Lord, telling Him of their myriad of intentions. They were so calm now, so confident.

I’m here, Lord, please listen to me…!

At this approach of death, there are two conflicting thoughts that had occupied my mind with equal power: one is to consider the possibility of losing her and learn to accept the truth with equanimity; and the other, to consider the impossibility of forestalling a natural course of event so I rather disregard what is painful and depressing till it finally comes. It was with the second thought that I reasonably held on to my hope, however slim that is, that my wife will survive this one, even this night. I wanted to talk to her first, to tell her many things, and to say how sorry was I for not taking care of her with the best I’ve got.

Please, Lord, not now…

I arrived in her room at 9:15 p.m. She lay motionless in her bed, unconscious but breathing. The life support machine was on standby, ready to be used again if my wife had another gasping attempt for dear life. But the doctors gave me the sad truth: should the electrocardiogram monitor slow down to flat again, it would be their last chance to revive her. To revive her for another try, they said, that would be her third for the night, would be fatal to her internal organs, that is, if they continue pumping beyond the standard time, it’s good as dead.

My wife's family and some friends started crowding around at her bedside (our three children were left in our home in Bulacan and a relative was already on its way to fetch them). All their downcast, glassy eyes mirrored fear of forthcoming death in the family.

My wife’s hand was still warm yet stiff when I held it. I tried to wake her up; I kept on talking to her, telling her I was with her right now and how I love her so much. Then I felt a slight movement or a jerk from her, and I saw an almost imperceptible thin line of a tear flowing slowly from a corner of her eyes. That was the last movement, the last tear I saw from her, the last sign of her life. After a couple of minutes, the green line in her heart monitor slowed down going to flatline, then everyone was frantic of calling the doctors again.

And that was their last attempt to revive her.

What is painful, what is unbearable, and what is depressing befell my life that instant, like wayward rocks from a cliff. And it is still a mystery that I was buried by the avalanche, so helpless and unprepared, and still I was alive.

But my world would never be the same again. I learned how people really feel when they say life is not worth living.

So what I have done during the past twelve emotionally difficult months of my life? How do I go on after losing someone whom I loved so deeply?

I’m doing fine, or trying hard to be OK, as what my friends have wanted me to be. To be prayerful and to be strong. To place loss into a perspective that is tolerable, like saying that “It’s God’s will” or “God doesn’t want her to suffer any longer.”   

Honestly, I’m having a tough time working for the whole twelve months, and I almost didn’t finish law school. I’ve noticed I made a lot of effort when I interact with other people. It’s no longer that easy, I always wear a mask, though tears don’t come easily to me. As if there is a barrier now between myself and my world before the tragedy. I want to let go and be free in the same old world. But I can’t.  

Solitude helps me concentrate to do what I love to do. I write and read a lot. I have to divert my mind from this gnawing guilt, sorrow and even anger. Even during my review for this coming bar exams, my effort to unburden things out of my chest made me read more fictions than my own law textbooks and review materials just to calm myself.

I have decided to revive this blog a week after her death and now I have been posting something about how I cope to help me and others who may be going through the same situation as I have. It’s that sort of a release, or some emotional catharsis. I am very open in telling and retelling what happened to me; like what I did with the first few paragraphs, writing about my wife’s last hours on that August night.

Healing, I was told, starts by telling others about the loss of a beloved partner. As if it’s a requirement for the bereaved to subscribe to this ancient Turkish proverb that tells us that the one who “conceals his grief finds no remedy for it.”

But when I am at home, I always try to keep myself busy. I have my kids to keep me going every day.

It is not that I’m lonely. I just seem to have an extreme sadness that will not go away. I cannot end my grief, it’s true, and I only have this choice: to accept it or to resist it. I would rather now learn to accept whatever it was I needed to accept. Only time will help me make it through.

Yet it will be a heart wrenching journey and I have a long way to go. But the loss might never be fully over.