Grief is a whole new kind of sadness

Here, I see, love doesn’t die. Litrato ni Scar

There are these rare mornings, when the sun still feels unsure of itself, that I feel closest to my loved ones who are no longer with us. Like many around the world, my last year was in sum, a story of loss. My family was tested one too many times, when my grandparents passed away, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We lost my Lolo Honor in June, and her wife Lola Letty shortly followed in September. My then only living paternal grandparent Lola Feling, bid us goodbye two months later. When she died, I remember thinking how it was so cruel for grief to be that familiar; how unfair that we were never given the chance to heal before it consumes us again. This pandemic was unforgiving like that. It was full of grief and it was exhausting being always. It was lonely being always on ones’ own So right now, I pray that this may be the space where we find respite- the space where we give each other the tight hug or the heavy pat in the back. Here, may we give each other what this pandemic has denied us- permission to decently mourn. A moment to find the words to say our goodbyes. To start, let me tell you that the people I lost were one of the good ones. My maternal grandparents Lola Letty and Lolo Honor took care of me when my parents were just starting to get on their feet. Lolo Honor, in his prime, tended cattle while Lola Letty planted earth crops. Both lived their whole life in a quiet farming village east of Batangas. Somehow, I think of them whenever I picture contentment. I stayed with them until I was old enough to go to school and since then, we visited them frequently. During our visits, the two of them will not say much except occasionally ask us if we ate. A question, that I now realize, is their own discreet invitation for a conversation, asking us “How have you been? I hope the world treats you alright.” When it is already time for us to leave, I remember my Lola Letty would always cry smiling. Her welling eyes would conspicuously betray the smile on her lips. It was by looking at her during these parting moments that I learned a person could both be genuinely happy and sad at the same time. I remember thinking maybe she cries smiling knowing that her children have now lives of their own, and she is both proud and sad that they no longer need her. I thought, perhaps love is rich and complex like that. 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. 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 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.