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The Blessing Box

One of the [tag]Christmas presents[/tag] I gave the two girls is a BLESSING BOX, an idea I got from Darcie Sims’ The Blessing Box tip. And no, I don’t think it’s Oprah’s original idea.

blessing box

Inside this little box, are tiny messages and reminders of the joys and blessings of my life. Instead of keeping a litany of hurt and failure in my head, now I commit these “gifts of love” to paper and place them in my box, where I can read them, touch them, hold them any time I need to. This little box represents the best things in my life and I never again have to fear forgetting the love and the light in my life. They are all here, in my Blessing Box, waiting for me to cherish them again and again and again…

Make a [tag]Blessing Box[/tag] for yourself this season. And watch it change your life. Never again will you count what you have lost or forgotten. Now you will always be reminded of the treasures in your life. No matter how sparkly or rusted, these memories and blessings are yours, to treasure, to cherish, to keep, to hold, to share.

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Coping and Surviving Christmas

last christmas
(Luijoe’s last Christmas in 1999, Baguio City)

Christmas is a special time of year. Although shiny decorations and twinkling lights are the window dressing for this exciting festivity, it is the warmth and love of family and friends that make the holiday season so memorable. However, it can be a painful time for those experiencing the recent loss of a loved one. It must be hard for the newly bereaved family members who lost Anne Sherina only last Monday, December 18, 2006. Anne Sherina died of “pulmonary affliction due to Dengue Shock Syndrome”. Grief in Christmas is doubly daunting for this family.

So when ABS-CBN “Salamat Doc” called me up to guest live for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve 6:00 AM episode, I didn’t hesitate. Though my busy schedule was full, I made room for this show. I know there are a lot of newly bereaved and seasoned grievers who are still coping with the difficulties of the holidays. My heart sometimes still echoes with emptiness as I roll out the gingerbread dough or hang the Christmas Angel cookies near Luijoe’s Memorial shrine. I think that hurt will always be with me, but now I know it only as a momentary ache – not like the first year when grief drowned over me in huge waves, each new wave hurling me deeper and deeper into despair.

My husband and I have walked that difficult road every Christmas.

The staff took a VTR of how I coped with Christmas through the years. I showed Luijoe’s memorial table, his memory box, toys, books and all the angel decors of our family den. I thought that my husband would buckle down in tears because he has never opened Luijoe’s photo album in years. The staff told us to sift through Luijoe’s photos. This VTR is indeed therapy for my husband. Knowing we are helping others gives us the courage to share our story, on how we coped and survived. We want to show that love isn’t something that ends with death.

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Ingrid Ramos, The Mystery Woman is the Other Woman?

infidelityWith the arrest of Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan at the vicinity of Ingrid Ramos’s townhouse, the question is Who is Ingrid Ramos?. In today’s issuse of Philippine Star , “Mystery woman: Who is Ingrid Ramos?” sheds some light…

PNP chief Director General Oscar Calderon….refused to answer questions regarding allegations that Honasan has an intimate relationship with Ramos, who was reportedly a former secretary of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile.

Enrile, in a press conference, denied knowing Ramos: “I don’t recall any woman by the name of Ingrid or with the family name Ramos. Maybe if that was her middle name I could not recall. Maybe she was one of my campaign supporters but I have so many thousand campaign supporters and I did not know all of them.”

Pray tell me, what is Gringo doing at 2:00 AM in Ingrid’s townhouse? There seems to be two versions on how Gringo was captured making me suspicious that they are trying to protect Ingrid and Gringo’s wife from undue embarassment. Tito Sotto’s version is that ” Honasan was arrested by police after a brief car chase at the vicinity of Christ the King Church. He said the fugitive senator jumped out of the moving vehicle and tried to hide in the neighborhood. It was while scaling fences that he hurt his right leg,” but the police operatives insist he was arrested while visiting the woman at 2:00 AM. Media seems to play the mystery woman to the hilt.

Police sources said they witnessed a confrontation in which Mrs. Honasan shouted profanities at her husband, accusing him of being unable to control his libido.

She vowed never to visit him again, the sources said.

(Source:Fugitive captured in ‘lover’s’ townhouse)

I can’t blame Gringo’s wife. If that happened to me, I’d smack my husband on the head with my Macbook , oh not that…my kaldero (pot). Even if my husband has a working relationship with a fellow lady lawyer, I find it despicable for two people to be working in the dead of the night and at a townhouse at that. It’s just too bad Gringo got caught in the place of residence of this mystery woman.

Stories of spouses getting caught is nothing new. With the advent of cellphones, a philandering spouse is sometimes caught in the act if their cellphone is turned on accidentally. I know of a friend who overheard the illicit conversation between her husband and the other woman in a hotel room. Apparently, the cellphone’s setting is such that a call is answered when any button is pressed. Imagine the anguish and anger of the wife upon hearing her husband’s romantic advances with this woman. The wife lost all respect for him and felt so violated.

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Remembering Our Loved Ones

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All Saints Day seems more like a school fair to me except there are gravestones, tents, picnic tables all over the cemetery. The mood at the cemetery is festive with children running around, the ice cream man ringing his bell, the taho vendor yelling taho, kids playing with melting candle, teens surfing at the SMART BRO internet booth, food vendors raking in some sales from the crowd. It’s a yearly ritual for our loved one whom we love, miss and remember always. Once a year, we share that common bond with families with a similar loss.

The first All Saints Day for Luijoe in 2000 felt surreal. The marble tombstone felt cold to the touch but the laughter and the crowd reminded me that Luijoe is never far from me. To my dear son, my dad, my mom, brothers Oscar and Ruben, they have not really left us but just gotten ahead of us to their real home. The memory of my loved one is a part of my life forever. Today is a celebration that love never dies.

all saints day

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a mom blogger who advocates constructive engagement in issues on family & society.
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