When I held you last

Is it even possible to forget?

I held you in my arms when there was no more life in you. I kissed your head and your feet. Before that, I watched you die. I knew I had to let you go.

Still, I had hoped the day would never come. I had always hoped that I would go before you.

I still cry.

I often relive that day. After all, it happened just months ago. It feels like years. Still, not a day goes by when I don’t remember that day I held you last. I never thought I could do it, but I did. It was my last gift to you.

I held you and gave you those gestures of love that I had given you for years.

To this day, I keep thinking, “Why did you leave me?”

“Get over it”

How do you do that anyway?

One of the worst things anyone has to go through is to see a loved one in pain. Quite close to that is to see the loved one go. In the end, perhaps, death is easier than pain, and even in intense grief, you realize that death is better than to have your loved one go through further suffering.

There are experiences you simply can’t forget. They haunt you.

My father suffered a stroke in September last year, two days before my mother’s birthday. They never got to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary. It wasn’t meant to be.

The frenzy of that day is still so clear to me. I took all my cards, knowing there would be a lot of expenses. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he could at least be stabilized, then later that same day to a different hospital.

Looking back, it was all just a matter of prolonging the agony.

On that first night, I wept outside the hospital’s emergency room as doctors attended to my father.

Sixteen days later, with my father gone, I wept inside the neurological ICU as hospital personnel “prepared” him for the morgue and contacted doctors on their fees (most were “no charge” out of professional courtesy). I was alone then; I volunteered to stay there till my father could be taken to the morgue.

Later, in the evening, at the place where the viewing was to be held, I looked upon my father again, this time as he was about to be “prepared” for the wake. They had questions about how he was to look. The answers didn’t come easily.

My father died on a Sunday. He was cremated on a Thursday.

My mother wrote a letter to him. It remained in his coffin during the wake, unseen. When he was about to be cremated, I put the letter in his hands.

That was it.

There are things you never forget.

###

"In fond memory of Dr. Bonifacio P. Sibayan, Ph.D"
Former president, Philippine Normal University
Former Commissioner, Commission on the Filipino Language
Former Editor-in-Chief, CEAP Perspective

Dear Sir,

I could have written this in my journal, but after some soul-searching, I decided not to do so. Perhaps I just wanted to pay some tribute to a great man, especially since I wasn’t able to attend your wake and your funeral. I’m sorry, Sir, I just didn’t know. I would have been there had I known, but I learned about it months later. And some time after that, I had my own deep personal losses to deal with.

I visited your grave for the first time last Monday. It was nice to see that your final resting place in this world looks well. I laid some flowers and a clipping of one of your articles there.

Quite appropriately, it rained.

You were a great man, Sir. The records will attest to that. This is my simple contribution.

Sir, I know you suffered a lot during the last five years or so of your life. You lost two sons. Your wife suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Perhaps there was some sense of divine mercy that you passed away within a year of your beloved wife.

You had a great way of putting things. Back in 1993, while we were in Bacolod, a convention organizer invited you to attend a workshop. What did you say? “But workshops are talkshops!” At one time, you came to my home for some personal matters, and you remarked, “You’re like Edgar Allan Poe!” because of the glass of vodka before me .

I disappointed you a lot of times, but I can never forget how, at one time, you actually called me a friend. You may remember, Sir, that I was just close to 30 when we met. You were already 75.

You were my mentor in things professional and otherwise. I never dared to call you my friend, but how I enjoyed all those vegetarian meals we shared at Organix (now gone) along Jupiter St. Or even how we saw a certain Comelec official in an unexpected outburst at AIM. We really laughed then.

During our last lunch together, you said to me, “It doesn’t matter what you achieve. As long as you’ve raised good children, you’ve done well.”

The last time we talked, over the phone, we were supposed to have lunch again. It never happened.

I can no longer say “Take care,” Sir, because something in me says that now, far from us, you are happy with your wife and sons.

So please whisper a bit to whoever is in charge of the universe. Some of us who are still here could use some help.

I miss you, Sir. I really do.

###

“Crying is contagious”

Today I attended the necrological services for a great-uncle of mine, the last of the male siblings to go. He was my mother’s favorite among them, because he was the one who welcomed her warmly into the family.

Following the mass, his daughter read an e-mail from one of her brothers who resides abroad. She then read a letter that she wrote to her father. During all this time, she was in tears. It had to take great courage to do what she did. There were times when it seemed she would not be able to continue, but she did…even though she kept crying and her hands trembled.

I never knew my great-uncle that well, if at all. Still, I had to try very hard to hold back the tears.

His demise couldn’t have been that much of a surprise. For years, he had been in a wheelchair following a stroke. He was under 24-hour care because of his condition. It was really just a matter of time.

Yet they cried. I nearly did. I didn’t want to cry because I thought it would be inappropriate, since we never knew really knew each other.

But to see his daughter cry was something else.

Crying is contagious. Loss is difficult. Loss is painful, whether the life lost was old or young.

Contrary to what some people say, growing old and gray isn’t fun. Death touches us at any age, but more so as we grow older. We lose the lives that nurtured us. We also lose the lives we nurtured. Which is more painful? I would think the latter. It has been so in my case anyway.

Then again, everyone has his or her own story to tell...and pain to bear.

###

“Debating Our Future”

(Note: This was written in October 2003)

I can only sympathize with the people of Iraq. Looking at it from far away, from the perspective of both the conquered and the conqueror, I can’t help feeling that Americans get some kind of perverse pleasure from debating, and perhaps even determining, the future of a nation they know little of, and of a people they know even less of.

But coming as I do from the Philippines, I know whereof I speak.

My own third-world country is once more in the news, particularly those generating from US-based news organizations. Once more we find ourselves in the map of the world, as defined by the United States. Bad news for us, though the Philippine president and the White House may think otherwise.

We had a number of good years when America didn’t care, because it didn’t have a stake in what we did. But that was just too good to last. Now we’re back to the bad old days.

I leave any analysis of the pre-Marcos era to my elders. They know far more than I. But from the Marcos regime to its fall in 1986, to the shaky Aquino years with all its coup attempts, particularly the nearly-decisive December 1989 coup attempt where Bush the Elder practically saved the Aquino administration with the “persuasion flights” of US fighter planes, the United States had been a major determinant of Philippine political life.

During those years, it was always a matter of pleasing America.

Things changed, however, with the historic Philippine Senate vote in September 1991 to reject a treaty that would keep US military bases in the Philippines. No more US bases, no more US aid (or “rent” as we liked to call it), no more GIs spending their oh-so-wanted dollars for the company of “willing” Filipinas. Use your imagination to what that actually means.

That withdrawal of US military bases was supposed to be the death of the Philippines, if US and Philippine officials at the time were to be believed.

In a way it was.

Suddenly, America no longer cared. We had to have a great catastrophe and a lot of body bags to even find our way to CNN.

What a blessing that was for the Philippines.

Suddenly lost in the US and international media, the Philippines experienced a period of peace and, well, relative prosperity. Out of America’s graces, the country saw not a single coup attempt. Not even the threat of it.

Instead, we converted a former military base into an industrial and tourist zone that many Filipinos today are proud of, and quite rightly. We had, rather unbelievably in these troubled days, a coup-free presidency. We actually experienced economic growth. We had good years despite the Asian financial crisis. True, we later elected a bad president, but we also removed him through extra-constitutional means.

Then came 9/11. And a Philippine president, who ironically was sworn in on the same day George W. Bush was, determined to reconnect the umbilical cord to America.

Now we hear talk of military aid. Or aid of any kind. A case for Ripley, at the least.

As we found out in the Philippines on Saturday, October 18, George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of the Philippine Congress, couldn’t even pronounce the name of Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero, right.

Give me insignificance, even anonymity, any time.

###