Enjoying Recovery

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I am listening to this seventies music , Friends of Distinction “Great Day”. I turn to my husband and sing the song “Aint it a great day? Could it be better?” I love that 70’s music.

road.JPG What a journey Butch and I have gone through! For some of you who know the inside story of our journey, it is a miracle that Butch and I have this second wind in marriage. We are enjoying this new life together. It’s been a wonderful journey yet we are constantly working on our recovery. As individuals, we are constantly evolving and changing.

Recovery is universal and applies to any crisis in life.

The road to recovery is often times hard and rocky. Sometimes we climb mountains. Sometimes we slide down the hill. Sometimes we take a breather.

Sometimes we grope our way through the darkness. There are times we get blinded by the sunlight. Often, many may walk the same road with us; sometimes we are alone.

Ever changing, interesting, and leading to someplace good or even better.

What a journey!

I continue to sing to my husband

Whatever we do dear,
There’s one thing that’s for sure
That nothing could be better
Than just being together.

He gives a goofy smile as if embarassed by my serenade. “we need to have a change of scenery.” and makes plans for a trip which might not materialize but it’s the romantic thought that counts right now.

I relax and enjoy this moment. I know I am right where I need to be on my journey.

What do people live for?

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ordinary people

““Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.”
Horace

This TV commercial is based on a real story and it touches a chord in each one of us who lost a loved one, be it a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a child. A group of old men decide to revisit their motorcycling youth after one of their own passes away. I know the feeling all too well .


TC Bank’s television commercial by Taiwan’s Ogilvy & Mather creative team have created a three-minute ad for a Taiwan bank that asks the question, “What do people live for?”

Have you ever felt you lost a dream? and thought to live it in some other way?

Dreams shattered, one wonders if life is worth living at all. Most bereaved pose that question : “What is there to live for?” despite the fact they may still have loved ones left. I cannot begin to imagine those that have lost whole families.

How does one even begin to live after a loss? I cannot begin to imagine the loss of lives that struck families in Yolanda-affected provinces even if I lost my precious child 14 years ago.

Do not live for the expectations of people around you
I did not pick up the pieces right away. I believe I had to go through the pain to get through it. And just one day five years after the death of my son, in a moment of silence and solitude, I got my answer. It is true that “No one ever finds life worth living – one has to make it worth living”.

It is simply a choice. As I have written in my first blog post , I chose joy over a lifetime of sadness. It is said that grief is inevitable but misery is optional. I realized that it did no good to sit in my misery pit. It does no good for the loss of my son to lead to the loss of two (me and my son).

It was a decision to lead the second part of my life differently and better than I would have imagined .

I wanted to live a new life, the best possible life . I wanted a meaningful life: to live with honor, integrity, courage, compassion, etc. I know being a homemaker for many years left me shy and unexposed to the outside world. This new life had to be outside my comfort zone to reach out to others like me. Along the way, things fell into place, a baby step at a time. I continue to live my dreams everyday, to make an impact, to go beyond my normal routine as a homemaker , to enjoy life, to keep on loving even when loving is hard to do.

I leave you with thoughts to focus on …

““Whatever the tasks, do them slowly
with ease,
in mindfulness,
so not do any tasks with the goal
of getting them over with.
Resolve to each job in a relaxed way,
with all your attention.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

Feeling the loss of a dream

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To the Noynoy supporters

Take time to read carefully from beginning to end including citations from columnists. This is about the grief and sense of loss (then road to acceptance) as the title suggest. This is not about you. Be happy your candidate won instead of making fun of people’s pain. Of course, you are entitled to get pissed (at the author of the Business World article I quoted) as we are entitled to our sadness. Remember that the quality of a victor shows in how he treats the defeated. thank you.

Juan VoteMay 10 called upon #juanvote to close the day with our anecdotes of the historic first national automated election. Right before we went live, the breaking news of the Comelec hit us hard. The speed of the results just stunned us. Thirty-five (35%) of the votes were just transmitted. Noynoy Aquino took a lead.

I was restless that night, unable to sleep. Did I waste 9 months of my life to voters’ education when I could have ventured into more profitable endeavors? You might all know by now that I didn’t vote for Noynoy Aquino because he didn’t fit my critieria of competency, character, coherent platform and clear vision. The night before May 10, I told myself that no matter who the president will be and as long as it is a fair and clean election (unlike the Hello Garci scandal in 2004), I will support the new president whoever he/she may be.

Just like sudden death, the impact of the news was shocking. How could 40% of the voters ignore “several candidates far more qualified by a record of public achievement than Noynoy” ? As Rene Azurin expressly wrote

“Mr. Aquino, because he is famous and a celebrity, can claim authority over us without any demand to show prior proof that he is at all qualified to exercise it. That’s intrinsically unfair. Of course, this is not Mr. Aquino’s fault. It is our fault for allowing ourselves to fall — stupidly, let us admit — under the spell of celebrity.”

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It has been 9 years….

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I brought a child into the world and thought my life was complete.
I bowed my head and thanked the Lord for giving this child to me.
My dreams were of the future and of how my child would be,
Of how he would run and play games like hide-and-seek and always run back to me.
How could I live my life without my child – How could I possibly survive?
When the dreams I once had for my child were no longer alive?
heaven

Nine years have passed since Luijoe died. Another year marked off the calendar as we confront life without our precious child.

Anniversary dates stare out from the calendar. For most of us, the days of birth and death are the most prominent but so hard to acknowledge. The birthday that brought so much jubilation may now be but a fond and sometimes painfully wistful day of a “what might have been” memory. Then the lousiest day of the year, the day that is etched on some stone in the south of Manila, the day some of our sweetness left us forever. A reasonable amount of preparation in anticipation of this gloomy day and the empty sadness it brings doesn’t really help. We are aware about these death anniversary dates which I’d rather call the Angel date.

You see, our family members are more irritable, tempers fly and tears easily roll down. Then we remember that Luijoe’s death anniversary is nearing. Ah yes, even if we were prepared for it. It is like standing at the shores of despair looking out at the waves below the sunset that is so beautiful while signaling the end of the day. These waves of profound sadness can be relentless and the big one is coming on that date. This knowledge never seems capable of preventing the wave from smashing us into our lonely reality.

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Blogging in a Cemetery

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Edit – April 26– I am not happy that the segment producer did not ask permission for a reenactment of Luijoe’s death in a swimming pool. They even got a kid that had a similar face to Luijoe. Dramatic effect pa kasi…eh blogging in a cemetery was enough for me to satisfy their production values. Other than that, the episode was good.

Here I am in a cemetery, with a TV crew. A GMA 7 show wants to feature bloggers for this Saturday (Thanks to Brian Gorrell for the hype on blogs these days). Why should I do this? I asked the producer. It’s not normal routine to blog in a cemetery. Yeah sure, it’s better than a reenactment which is a definite no-no for me. Sure, I bring flowers, candles and my small chair but blogging? Never tried it but yes, I do bring my macbook everywhere with me. But the producer is persuasive, “Maybe you might consider blogging here”.

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