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 earlier than the actual date of the nationwide commemoration for the dead (November 1 or 2), with my three children, my mother-in-law, and a sister-in-law in tow. I just wanted to avoid the mad rush in the area and the unnecessary festivities and maddening commercialization of the memorial day.  
 

It was a beautiful afternoon, bright and windy, unlike on the day of the funeral where it was gloomy and dark with rain. But the first time I went to her grave I felt like the day we put her to rest. No doubt, the overall grief and all it's triggers and nostalgia were there. But unlike some months before, I didn’t allow myself to be overwhelmed by a paroxysm of grief. My eyes, though, were dried. Well, it just felt so weird, like it was not happening again, but I must accept, just like the way I accept all the realities that came into my life now. No more self-pity or misery, that is, if I can.

I did not come to my wife’s grave to grieve for her loss, but to communicate with her. Visiting and speaking with her reinforced this feeling that she is still here in my heart. It helped a lot to say all the things that I wish that I had said to her during her suffering, especially my regret about my helplessness to save her. Rosalie’s death was so sudden and unexpected that I find the need to talk with her, to have such harsh reality finally sink in and try to bury this sadness in the graveyard. 

I’ve read a story about a man who would take a beach chair to the cemetery every morning with his coffee. There he would sit, drink the coffee, and have a lengthy conversation with his wife. This might sound crazy but, yes, the man had a good purpose: to express himself out, albeit in the quietude of his grief. But I couldn’t be like this man. I just wanted this day, this very first visit, to tell my wife all I wanted to say. I repeated over and over in my mind how sorry was I, and how much I love her and really miss her.  

I could feel her while I was at her graveyard (which she shared with her father and other departed relatives), blankly staring at the depressing headstone with her name on it. I wanted to believe she actually heard me say those unspoken words for her. That she is watching over me and my children not only during this visit, but wherever we are and whenever we think of her. The visit to the cemetery was just a manifestation, or you might say a public way, of remembering her—isn’t it good to express or to draw out your grief?—,of how her family misses her, not only this day but everyday of our lives.

A line from Robert Frost came into my mind when I was in the cemetery. They were the first four lines from one of his popular poems “In a Disused Graveyard.”

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 come to honor their faithful departed even though they are long gone. No one is being buried in the memories of the living. The graveyard, which is a metaphor for a full stop or the ultimacy of everything, is also an everlasting shrine to the living that people are not immortal, and in the fullness of their time, they would be joining their dead in the same gravesite.

I just wonder how long it would take to remember your dead after you have died. So who would remember my wife when I was gone, and then finally all of our children and relatives had to leave this life, too? Will her gravesite no longer be "disused"? Or was it only then that Death would finally bring the dead or those who are forgotten to oblivion? 

We stayed in the cemetery for more than two hours, or just as soon as the last stick of candle started to dim its light. We left the melted wax and the flowers behind, but we brought with us the same love for my wife, and the same memories about the love she had for us.

LUCKLESS CHARMS

HONESTLY, I don’t believe in lucky charms, amulets or superstitions hinged on luck. But right now I got a pair of “lucky charms” tucked in my wallet.

They were two miniature figures of animals made of paper. They were origamis of a fish and a bird in green art paper made personally by my son Nathaniel as simple present for my birthday last September. He gave them to me with a note bearing this message: According to Japanese tradition, an origami heron/bird means long life while the other (fish) means money/wealth. Put the fish in your wallet always.

Just like what he wanted me to do, I thrust them in my wallet, and stayed there ever since, not so much for good luck, but rather for their sentimental value, like any special gift from some special person.

But I don’t capitalize on his heart-tugging wish for my long life and wealth, but for what he felt or thought about me after his mother’s death. There’s no question that he has insight into my big lost, or perhaps sees me now as running out of luck. To him, I’m Superman just downed by a kryptonite, or Samson who lost his seven locks, or a Jedi who lost the Force within him now suffering series of setbacks. I need help so badly, I must hang on, no matter what, and to overcome everything from mighty odds to terrible misfortune and even mind-boggling tragedy, and become my son’s hero again.

That would take a lot of heroic guts, of course. And my son is more than willing to help with his good luck gift.

Before the tragedy, some people were emphatic about the luck our family had then, that is, for being happy and complete. I remember them saying that we are so blessed. They say I am lucky (or blessed, as some people use to mean the same as lucky) for having a regular job, a pretty wife and three bright kids. They say we are lucky with the house we are living in right now, a fact attested by a friend of my in-laws in Malate, who is believed to have a third eye or gifted with an unusual skill on magic spell, when she visited our house. The plump and mysterious woman told me that there were no bad spirits or elementals residing with us in the house, but what we only got was a harmless gang of white duwendes (elves) occupying some corner in the front yard.

A former yaya of my daughter would attribute these elves for the luck that brought about the quick recovery in our finances from the loss we suffered after we were swindled by our real estate agents, and why, after our pricey mistakes, we got our own house from a clean title. It might not be true, but who am I to disagree to another person's belief?

In fact, my late wife grew up in a family believing all those luck and, like most Filipino families including ours in Ilocos, theirs was practically prone to idiosyncratic superstitions. I don’t have any problem with superstitions, as long as they would do my family no harm. So when my family transferred to our new abode in Bulacan almost ten years ago, I allowed myself to be involved in those little rituals associated with such occasion. I brought in a jar of salt, a bottle of water first, and a cup of rice, before we entered some of our things. And going back farther to the past, during my wedding, my wife and I did almost everything or followed superstitions for good luck which our elders said that were connected to the conduct of the wedding, other than those required of the traditional rite in the Catholic church. Otherwise, they warned me, some bad things would befall the marriage.

But somehow, deep inside, I also joined other people who desperately need to believe in luck. I have this clandestine hope that something good may happen to our marriage and the whole family with every luck that I could get.

My wife even had these “charms” she kept during the last few years of her life: a medallion, a rose petal from a blessed shrine, a tissue with a blood of a saint, stampita, a prayer booklet with a piece of a cloth from an image of the Nazarene, and a cultic symbol of an eye inside a triangle. She might have kept them for their charms, or the miracles they promised evoke or for sentimental reasons. But she died just the same.

Part of the many questions of my grieving mind that I desperately looked for answers upon her death, is why these lucky charms, or such incantations of miracles, didn’t help her at all. Now that my wife’s gone after almost 15 years of marriage, and our family no longer complete, does it mean that our luck had expired or we are not lucky after all, in spite of the rituals, charms and those thingamajigs involved in evoking luck? Is it our bad luck that we have to suffer this way?

My mother, just days before my wife’s death told me that a man in our place in Ilocos with an otherwordly power against witchcraft whom she solicited for an unusual opinion, told her that there were two women—both from the Visayas—who were very envious of my wife, who went to a mangkukulam (witch) to harm my wife fatally. I knew a couple—both Bisaya—who were envious of my wife for some reason only the couple or my wife knew. But I am not the kind of person who can easily believe this kind of implausible report, even if it comes from my mother.

Putting witchery or magic into the picture is beside the point. I am referring to the malas—the “negativity” that had befallen us. But I still can’t get my head wrapped around the idea that our fate was really preordained, and we could just wait when and how it would happen, just like how the Greek tragedians portray a man, as a helpless creature borne along by destiny, so he had no right to whine or pity himself, or complain about indeterminable events caused by a combination of unpredictable forces.

My wife’s devotion to Mother Mary and lately to Divine Mercy is unquestionable. She was a very prayerful person, especially during the last stages of her illness. I could feel her resolve to live a little longer for us, that she must hold on to her faith for the last time, but somehow, God must have known what is best for her.

I am not as religious as my wife, but I always believe in a Supreme Being, and luck had nothing to do with what He did for us.

Now whenever I look at the origamis in my wallet, they remind of the thoughtfulness of my son, and my commitment to be with my three children during their own inexplicable grief, rather than the luck these paper charms may bring. I believe that it’s only through prayers that I will be able to get a remarkable confluence of elements all working together for our family. What is important is not the tragedy itself, but how I must respond to it. Hence, with or without any lucky charm, I must look for a way to make things better in my family.

Just wish me luck, if you may!

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 this time around is a sort of rediscovery or a revisit of this relatively quaint format in poetry. For those who are not familiar with this form, a cinquain is a class of poetic forms that employ a five-line pattern, similar to the Japanese tanka. The style I used here is from the modern version invented by American poet Adelaide Crapsey, using 22 syllables distributed among the five lines in a 2-4-6-8-2 pattern.  

I used to write snippets of verses. The activity, albeit brief and spontaneous, can be an excellent source of freedom and a tamed arena for releasing tensions. When I am inspired I scribbled maybe just a line or two that might relate personally to my experience or emotions at that moment. My lines don’t necessarily employ the conventional use of meter, and no rhythm scheme or pattern but bespeak rather of things that I am extremely interested in or passionate about. But this is my first attempt of writing cinquains. 

The above samples are products of random thoughts on verses originally “written” in my cellphones and saved as SMS during the two-week confinement of my wife before her death and the succeeding days when I was in the hospital to accomplish some important documents. The fragments included here are stray thoughts in separate occasions; I just let my thoughts flow and did a couple of drafts after that. And I discovered that some of them are very near to the cinquain format. I only have to revise of them a little, and picked a set of four to complete a single thought.  

So there, and you just to look closely how some unrelated words relate to each other for an imagery. They are so brief for so much commentary!

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.

A POEM FROM HER FILE

AFTER the funeral, I seem pretty numb and restless and not sure what to do with the personal things that my wife had left, mostly in our bedroom. I can still feel her presence with them, and as if she has not left us after all, that right now she is still in the hospital, or recuperating in their family house in Malate, Manila.

Two weeks after the funeral, I started sorting out the house and gathering all her belongings. Clearing out belongings of the dead, someone says, is a way of trying to move on. But clearing away belongings can be more painful this very early. Just now I feel a hot blur of pain in my throat when I look at her things. Holding her personal things again and feeling her presence—or absence—brings me to malignant grief. I have had some sad experiences in my life so far, but this one of holding the things of a loved just after her death, is one of the most heart wrenching and saddest for me.

My wife’s sister told me that I have to wait for 40 days, or a year, after her death before parting her personal belongings totally. Would that make things slow and painless on my part? Right now I had to pack away things but only those I think would be too impractical to leave around. But I’m not in a hurry to make a move to get rid of every last item that had belonged to my wife.

Actually, I began sorting out her papers, or documents, that exclusively belong to her a week after her death. I went into her personal files and gathered records of her birth and marriage, our kid’s baptismal certificates, and other important employment records that I could use for my application for death benefits in SSS and for other purposes.

But then it’s not all that easy. Other than those documents, there are letters, messages, special photos that she kept, and some of her personal notes that I had browsed. Memories came in a deluge, and I was overwhelmed with grief. Yet I must not allow myself to fall apart because to do so would only accomplish nothing.

From her brief case I saw an original copy of a poem that I had written for her barely a month before our first anniversary. It’s only now that I realize I had written just one poem, and not even a single love letter, for her in our 14 years of marriage. There were times she spoke about me not being as sweet as before; she must have missed receiving letters, or poems, that she used to while we were still young lovers and in the early years of our marriage. SMS or text messaging was an unknown animal then. Defending myself, I would remind her of my kind of job, and those family matters that keep me busy all the time; or perhaps as between us, a familiarity and complacency that made me unaware of any storm to come. How could I’ve known that her life is as short as an epigram? Are words not really enough then?

Going back to the solitary poem from her file, I remember why I put into words my thoughts for her. It was the very first night after our wedding day that she did not sleep beside me. She attended a church activity somewhere with her sister and mother that night and they had to stay overnight. I couldn’t sleep, so instead of fretting about her absence until the wee hours, I scribbled lines for her.

When I handed her the poem, I even read it for her and explained what it means, tears welled in her eyes. She embraced me while expressing her appreciation and love to me.

So I had to read the lines again… for her.

your absence one night(to Rosalie)

it seems eons had gone by
since i made my last one
all thoughts on love, my beloved,

but what are words on a white sheet
when i could sing life sans the storms
and stress, the daydreams
i turned off?

why should tears now flow from the pen
or why should my olympia whine
when I had the bliss of your touch and
tender eyes?

do i really need angst
or halcyon days, or those little pains
to weave verses again,
once hanging in void, now so special
when voiced out in silence deaf
with sighs of love

but tonight, even for the briefest time,
i explore the throb, the deepest
the best that pumped out from
the letter keys when i searched
your eyes on roomy space, a ghost
of touch on steamy breeze

missing your love is burning me

when you finally came to our bed
the next after sundown
all the more i embraced that profound
beat, overflowing, flooding
but no longer on the sheet
in the mechanical feed,
but my own.

loving you more than i feel

and when bliss at its utmost reveals your love
i rather stop the flow of verse, from a void,
than I speak of your love again
in my silence

november 1997

She's gone now. Yet I had to fight and continue moving on, to dispel this ugly grief—but all these things take a great deal of energy or conscious indifference to pain.

I need something to hold on. Perhaps I must resort to writing verses again, about our past together or my future without her.

EULOGY FOR MY WIFE

(undelivered)

GOOD afternoon. On behalf of our family, I thank you all for coming here today to honor the life of a remarkable woman. She was my best friend, my lover and soul mate. She was my wife, and the mother of my three children. I shall truly miss her.

Rosalie, the sunshine of my life for over 14 years, succumbed to breast cancer (stage 4) with liver complication last August 5, 2011. She was only 38.

Someone had told me that losing your partner in marriage is one of life’s most traumatic events. Though I would say, losing a mother, for my kids, and a beautiful daughter, for my mother-in-law, would merit the same pain, the same trauma. But again, I would say, death by any reason or definition is very difficult for the bereaved. Nothing will be the same again. But we are thankful that Rosalie's suffering was brief and her passing peaceful.

Last June this year my dear wife Rosalie felt an abdominal pain which lasted for almost three months and culminated in the loss of her life. On July 22, upon the advice of her sister and a cousin, she was convinced to be admitted in the hospital. I said “convinced” or I might say “forced,” because days before that, she vehemently refused any suggestion from her immediate family to go the hospital and be treated by doctors. In spite of the bearable pain, she chose to be given medication instead. She had that fear of surgery, of doctors operating on her. You might say it’s an imprudent decision, but please understand that my wife was just being confused, a personal turmoil that had started two or three years ago, where she was first diagnosed of the dreadful "big C." It was her choice to keep it to herself, and I had respected that.

And this I would like to ask you, and it’s for you to judge: did my wife choose the best thing for her? Did we, her family, fail to guide her and give what’s best for her? But did anyone of you know very well what’s best for her?

Before I go on, please respect whatever decision my wife had made. That was her decision and her family respected that, at sana ay mauunawaan ninyo rin siya. Stage 2 cancer is curable, sabi nila. Pero may namamatay din. Marami na rin ang nag-survive sa cancer, sabi nila. Pero karamihan, namamatay din pagkatapos ng maikling gamutan ngunit napakalaking halagang nagastos. May nagsabi na wala ring silbi ang pera kung kanser ang tumama sa katawan, maaaring maubos ang iyong naipon ngunit mamatay ka rin pala. Walang kaibahan ito sa hindi na nagpa-opera at mamatay din, as expected. Maaaring sa operasyon ay madurugtungan ang buhay ng pasyente. Maaaring may total healing. Pero depende pa rin sa kanser, at sa kondisyon ng katawan ng isang tao. So how can you be sure na kung nagpaopera si Rosalie, at sumailalim sa kinatatakutan niyang chemotherapy treatment ay gagaling siya ng tuluyan?

Rosalie's father died of cancer when she was 17 years old. One of her officemates died also of cancer (breast cancer), na lagi niyang pinapaalala sa akin tuwing iminumungkahi ko ang operasyon. Baka daw makatulad niya rin ito na namatay pagkatapos gumastos ng napakalaki sa operasyon at chemoteraphy. Alam po lahat ni Rosalie ang mga ito; yun lang po ang asawa ko ay ayaw sumugal sa buhay.

Ganunpaman, tuloy-tuloy ang pagdarasal ng asawa ko; gabi-gabi nagrorosario siya. Early this year, she started doing a novena to the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Marilao. May kaibigan kaming nagsabi na may mga gumaling na sa pagnonobena rito. At iyon nga po ang ginawa niya. Hanggang sa huling mga araw niya sa ospital, tangan-tangan niya ang kanyang maliit na rosaryo at ang pampleto mula sa Divine Mercy. Umaasa siya na siya ay gumaling para sa pamilya niya. At kung ano man ang naging panalangin niya hanggang sa huling sandali ay hindi ko na po alam.

Please understand her. We respected her decision, we guided her, and we prayed for her. We did not leave her alone. And we did not cause her death.

Ngayon ko lang napagtanto ang isang katotohanan, na mas malakas ang loob ni Rosalie kaysa ako na asawa niya. Mas matapang ang loob niya, mas malalim ang paniniwala niya sa Diyos. Sa tindi ng hirap na dinanas niya, upang hindi na ako gumastos para sa operasyon, at upang hindi mabawasan ang aming ipantustos sa pag-aaral ng mga bata, ay isang bagay na hindi mawaglit sa isip ko.

If we are to make any sense out of this tragedy, it is that life is both fleeting and precious. I have also been told that in time, the pain that I feel would subside and that I would only possess the marvelous memories of our lives together.

It all started in Rex Printing Co., in Quezon City where I worked as a proofreader. Siya naman ay nahuling pumasok as a circulation clerk ng Publications Department. Ipinakilala siya sa akin ng kanyang kaibigan na si Leah Bartolome na kaklase niya sa PSBA.

But prior to our meeting, or before my final interview at Rex, nagdasal ako noon sa Sto. Domingo Church, malapit kasi doon ang opisina ng Rex, na kung matanggap ako sa work, sana makilala ko rin dito ang mapapangasawa ko. Ang unang babae na nakita ko pagkalabas ko ng Church ay si Leah. I don’t know kung bakit nakangiti yun sa akin. Yun pala, after a year, siya lang pala ang maging daan para makilala ko ang aking future wife.

Nagustuhan ko si Rosalie dahil kahit sabihing mukhang suplada, may nakita akong kahinhinan at kabaitan sa kanya. Pilit man minsan ang kanyang mga ngiti ay namumutawi naman ang katamisan kung siya ay kakausapin. Rosalie had a smile that would light up a room. She quickly became the center of my universe. I was truly in love with her.

After our first meeting, napanaginipan ko isang gabi na ipinakilala ako sa father niya. Pumasok kami sa kuarto ng father niya na noon ay bumabangon mula sa pagkahiga sa isang steel double deck. I didn’t know that his father was already dead that time. Kaya noong nagpunta ako sa house nila, kahawig nga ng lalaki na nasa frame sa dingding nila ang lalaking napanaginipan ko. At meron din pala silang double deck na bakal (na ngayon ay nasa bahay namin sa Marilao). Later ko lang nalaman, ka-birthday ko pala ang tatay niya, at hindi lang siya, kundi ang dalawa pang kapatid niya ay parehong ipinanganak ng September 21. It’s very weird, but I know something had been planned for me that time.

So kahit noong sinagot niya ako, parang lubos ko na siyang kakilala. Kung ano ang pagkakilala ko sa kanya, iyon pa rin siya hanggang kami ay mag-asawa. Wala siyang itinagong ugali. No pretensions whatsoever, ‘ika nga.

Rosalie and I had a life full of ups and downs like any other couple, but we did our best to please each other. We enjoyed being at home with our kids. We enjoyed jazz together. We are both avid listeners of Josh Groban and Michael Buble. Just having a simple or uncomplicated family in an uncomplicated marriage was our ardent desire.

Family was Rosalie’s heart and soul. The most important people in her life were our children Nathaniel, Neyo Martin, and Roseya. All out siya sa mga studies nila, that even during her last days, noong namamalagi na siya sa family house nila sa Malate ay gumagawa pa rin siya ng reviewer para kay Roseya. Kahit mayroon na siyang karamdaman, sinasamahan pa rin niya si Roseya sa kanyang ballet school and lately sa gymnastics last summer. Kahit sa Pasig pa yun, go lang siya nang go para sa anak naming babae.

And, of course, another important person is her mother. Dahil pumanaw na maaga ang kanyang ama, lahat ng pagmamahal ay gusto niyang ibigay kay Nanay. Ito ang isang dahilan kung bakit noong nagsisimula pa lang kaming bumuo ng isang pamilya ay di ko mayaya na doon kami tumira sa Ilokos. Ayaw niyang iwanan si Nanay.

I can say with absolute confidence that Rosalie is not gone: She is everywhere, and she is with us right now. She’s with her children every hour of the day now. She’s still part of our prayers and she’s with us as we make our dreams fulfilled.

Rosalie is gone but her love, hope and devotion to her family remains and the simplest way my children and I can repay her back is to keep that flame of love, devotion and her hope for the family eternally burning in our hearts.

This afternoon, I ask all of you to feel the joy and beauty of Rosalie’s boundless spirit as we celebrate her truly amazing life. So on behalf of my sons Nathaniel and Neyo Martin, my daughter Roseya, and my mother-in-law, I thank you all for coming, and pray that you keep her in your heart always.

And we know too, that without doubt, she will be welcomed where she belongs now, in the Kingdom of Heaven.
_______
I wrote this a night before the interment on the 13th of August. But I wasn't able to read this during the necrological mass held at Malate Catholic Church. I was already overwhelmed with grief as soon as the mass ended. I backed out when my brother asked me to go up the podium and read what I had prepared. I just stood beside her coffin, and bid goodbye to my wife in the same altar where we exchanged vows almost 15 years ago.