Every time I think of the past now, I wonder how death brings some memories back to life. Maybe it is the universe’s act of grace, taking mercy on our loss. I think of my Lola Feling and I remember walking into her house and being offered a cup of coffee. She would look at me with her warm eyes and raise her own cup as if inviting me to take a sip. I never got to meet my late paternal grandfather but Lola Feling in the eyes of her many “apo” was more than enough. She stood as a second mother for all her grandchildren whose parents were either dead or absent. You see, she was just happy to take everyone under her wing. She never minded the mess, the noise, and the ruckus from a bunch of children. As I write all these now, my heart feels an immense sense of gratitude- for having the opportunity to be a recipient of a kind and sweet love for merely being their son’s or daughter’s daughter. Being now orphaned of grandparents, I learned that grief is a whole new kind of sadness. You see it the way people smoke a cigarette after a funeral or when they meet your eyes with a blank stare.
because we miss them but mostly, I came to know, is because we do not know what to do with all the love, we still have for all of them. Love and loss, I discovered, are in fact two ends of the same thread. We ache as deep and as profound as we love. As I am sure you all now know, not every day comes by easy. It is not every day that we see it is a glass-half-full rather than a glass-half-empty. Not all mornings bring solace. When you are nursing a hole in your heart, some days fly by, but others stubbornly linger. After all, all of us know how easy it is to feel alone these days. So, I let it hurt. I cry when the pain feels too unbearable. Every now and then, I remind myself that nothing could have been any more human than feeling grief. We grieve knowing that everything may look the same way tomorrow and the day after that, but the truth is, the world is lesser every day for losing a great soul, many great souls. Maybe we will all heal from this one day or maybe we will never be again completely whole. But right now, I think none of it really matters because either way we are already stronger and kinder for it.
When we lowered my grandparents’ bodies to the ground, my parents wailed. I expected to see them weeping but I was not prepared to see them like that. They wailed as if there is just too much pain and there is no other way for it to exit their body. Some nights, I can still hear them crying. I, still find myself crying; partly
Here, I see, love doesn’t die. Litrato ni Scar
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