Where I am today

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DadoFamily214I often wonder how he would look like today. The young man as he often called himself even at 6 years old, is supposed to be an incoming college freshman, the last of my children to be in school.

Would he have been taller than my husband? Would he have the same gleaming smile? Will he still throw me kisses and give me a bunch of flowers with an ““I love you” note? Would he still be cracking jokes? I can’t imagine because I will always remember him as an innocent and beautiful 6 year old boy whose death caused my world to spin around and around. I still miss him dearly but the pain is not heart wrenching anymore. I don’t feel like I am drowning in pain. I yearn for him especially during birth and death anniversaries or when I see a boy similar to his age.

Like this very moment, I think of Luijoe. Tomorrow is his 10th angel year.

flowers

““I don’t know how you’ve survived. It would kill me to lose my child.” Oh, to have one peso for every time I heard that sentence! I’d spend every one of those pesos for an answer, for you see, I don’t know how I’ve survived. What choice did I have? Each transistion has been work, hard work, sorting through what it means and learning to function in the face of these circumstances not of my choosing. Five years living as a zombie and the next five years in my new normal.

My new normal as a blogger served me well: my role as a bereaved mother is no longer the first way I define who I am, but it is ever-present in my life and cannot be separated from all that I am . . . for the rest of my life.

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Ambivalent towards Erap

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I feel ambivalent towards Erap.

I neither like nor dislike him. My feelings has something to do with the memories of my little boy. My 6 year old son adored Erap. Luijoe thought the world of the former president. Luijoe yelled at the top of his voice that Erap was the smartest president in the whole world, in a jumpacked room at a plane ticket office ten summers ago.

In his booming voice, he threw his hands up in the air , twirling around the room, “Mom, President Erap is so smart, the smartest president in the whole wide world”.

awkward silence

Nobody in that room could deny not hearing my son’s adulation. It was May 2000 at the height of Erap’s unpopularity. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow both of us. I could feel the steely gaze and snickers surrounding us. My boy never sensed the awkwardness of the situation but I wanted to save face.

“So , why is Erap the smartest president in the whole wide world?”, as I squeaked the question to my naughty son.

“Mom, his jokes mom. He says the funniest jokes. That is very smart of him” (or something like that)

See my son had a great sense of humor and loved to throw a joke or two. Then he discovered the Erap jokes during one of our conversations. Luijoe overheard us laughing to our heart’s content on an Erap joke. He wanted to know why were laughing. He badgered to know the joke. So I narrated the joke

Erap: Miss, do you have a ballpen?
Clerk: Sorry, sir we don’t have any ballpen
Erap (angry): Why did you name your store “Penshoppe“?

royal_elastics 043.jpgHow my boy laughed! Luijoe loved to tell this joke to everyone . One time, Luijoe and I passed by Penshoppe ( a teen fashion store) in Glorietta mall and I teased him if he wanted to go inside with me , so I could ask the same question Erap asked. Luijoe tugged me away. hehe

I bought him the book , “Joke ni Erap” by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in early 2000. Luijoe often packed this Erap Joke book in his backpack and kept re-reading those jokes that he could understand. He loved the book so much, he even labelled it with his name. Here are a few of his favorite jokes culled from that book.
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How my son inspired me to start a grief support advocacy

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““My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?”

I can easily relate to one of the last words of a dying Christ.

Who has not, at some dark hour, cried out to the heavens in anguish and pain and wondered if indeed we have been cursed and abandoned by God ?

Picture 1.png
Image taken from Luijoe’s prayer book

The image of a dying Jesus Christ , a sorrowful Mother Mary and a comforting John never fails to bring me tears as poignant memories of my son drift into my mind. I wrote this story when I first started this blog 4 years ago and I think it is worth sharing again.

Being a “cafeteria Catholic” my religious faith was at best mediocre. Luijoe, my innocent and religious 6 year old son often chastised me for not praying hard enough . I felt like a terrible mother who led a ho-hum religious existence. Gosh, we learn so much from our children , don’t we? It is Good Friday , one of my treasured memories that remind me of my son. The image of the dying Jesus when he blurted out ” “Woman, behold thy son, Behold thy mother” struck a chord in my son’s heart.
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Grief Gone Viral- Tweeting a Child’s Death

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I’ve been there. I’ve been judged. I understand the anger of @Miltary_Mom when people started to judge her when she tweeted on the drowning of her two-year old son Bryson Ross in the swimming pool of their home in Merritt Island, Fla.

Shellie Ross otherwise known as @Miltary_Mom and who blogs at blog4mom.com tweeted the following:

5:22 p.m. – a breezy update about the fog rolling in and spooking the chickens as she worked in her chicken coop.

16 minutes later, , a 911 call was placed from her home saying that Bryson was lying at the bottom of the pool.

6:12 p.m. ““Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.”

5 hours later, she wrote in tweeter ““remembering my million dollar baby” then posted photos of the little boy. (Some of these tweets and photos have since been removed.)


Then violent reactions errupted:

Not long after that, a firestorm erupted on Twitter, with strangers wondering what kind of mother tweets during a crisis. The debate has been going on for days around the Internet, with critics calling Ross callous (and suggesting that if she had been paying as much attention to her child as she had to her Twitter account, her son would not have come to harm) and supporters (many who know her in real life, and others who have never met her) describing her as a caring mother who reached out to her virtual community during a tragedy.

A local paper quoted Madison McGraw saying that ““If she didn’t want questions raised at such a painful time, perhaps she shouldn’t have tweeted immediately after her child died. A child is dead because (of) his mother’s infatuation with Twitter.”

In Madison’s blog, she points out that “Between the hours of 8:37 a.m. and 5:22 p.m (her first and last before son was found drowned in pool) she tweeted 74 times. ”
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I Condemn the Ampatuan Massacre in Maguindanao

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“We can’t call him an animal because I have pets and they are tame. No, he is a monster. They are monsters” Mangudadatu on Ampatuan Jr. and his gunmen.

maguindanao-massacre
Photo Credits to Reuter
View Slideshow of Other Photos

I see it in Twitter, Plurk, Facebook and blogs. The outrage is all over the internet. No to Maguindanao Massacre.

Pat Dayrit a Twitter Follower gasps: Oh my god. The politics of this country is appalling.

A facebook friend posts at her wall: Mangudadatu told reporters, referring to Ampatuan Jr. and his gunmen. “My wife’s private parts were slashed four times, after which they fired a bullet into it,” he added. “They speared both of her eyes, shot both her breasts, cut off her feet, fired into her mouth. I could not begin to describe the manner by which they treated her.”

I condemn this brutality. I feel so much for the families who lost their loved ones in the Maguindanao massacre. I weep as I see the mutilated bodies in photos . How do they even begin to comprehend the immensity of their loss? Such unfamiliar territory . There are no words to express my utter disbelief that this could happen in a democracy.

Continue reading my commentary on the Maguindanao Massacre at blogwatch.ph

When Friends Leave… Let Go!

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“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”– Saint Jerome

You would think 50-year olds act maturely in the face of adversity. I am sure most of us can. A recent misunderstanding among old friends (including myself) jolted me. We are talking of years of friendship. It started with a gossip. If there is gossip among friends, clear the air instead of being defensive and ignoring the issue. What’s funny is that they chose to place the scapegoat on the ““informant” which is immaterial because the issue is the malicious gossip. A mere explanation or an apology would have cleared the issue.

The reaction was “anger” . Feelings of anger is normal if it leads to a positive resolution. Instead of talking like two mature individuals, the angry friend including others involved in the gossip removed my friend (let’s call her Alpha) from Facebook including myself. Friends are supposed to exert all efforts to resolve matters, if they were friends to start with.

Consider my other friend, whom I will call Yadda. A similar misunderstanding happened. Sure there were hurt feelings on both sides but Yadda chose to talk it over and over like a broken record until we were both satisfied with the resolution. The friendship is still there.

See the difference?

You cannot say you’ve lost a friend. If a friendship is capable of ending, it is because it never existed.
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How Gossip Hurts Friendships

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““It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one’s back, that are absolutely and entirely true.” Oscar Wilde

gossipJust recently, I received an email from a friend (let’s call Delta) straightening the facts of a gossip in a recent reunion. The email was directed to the alleged gossiper (let’s call Alpha) and another friend (let’s call Beta). Take note that this is communication among “best” friends.

It was supposed to be a clarification of the “gossip” but instead the communication was totally ignored and made public by Alpha and Beta. The point of the email was to clarify. Direct , clean conversation clears the air and paves the way for good feelings about ourselves and our relationship with others.

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Eulogy to a Friend

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(Berthram (Nonoy) Tan, Best Friends Forever UP Cebu 74-78 died on September 27 due to Myocardial Infarction. He came to Cebu and pretended to invite Robert, fellow classmate to dinner at Laguna Garden. Unknowingly,he was part of the game plan of Robert’s children to give a special surprise silver anniversary party. They had grand time that night and parted ways wee hours of the morning.

The next day , Nonoy woke up to get ready to depart for manila and had breakfast. He wasn’t able to reach back to his room and fell unconscious.He was DOA when he reached Cebu Doctor’s Hospital.)

This is my eulogy which I read last night during the necrological services.

Dear family, relatives and friends and Best Friends Forever,

I am not a stranger to death. I lost my mother, father, my two brothers and most painful of all my beloved son. 5 deaths in the family.
Still, the loss of a friend hits me hard. Even if my house in Manila is
undergoing a clean up operation due to Ondoy flood damage, I knew I
just had to come here to Cebu and pay my last respect to a friend.

I only met Nonoy in 2006 when Joan invited me for his birthday
celebration. I was like ” who is nonoy tan?”. But see, we shared
mutual friends from our group, Best Friends Forever . I had no idea who he was. Meeting him for the first time, we hit it off right away. It helped that he knew my dad .We could relate to stories of our common classmates and both had health issues with our heart.
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