grief | The Prodigal Kid

For most of last year, and the early months of this year, I have come to realize that there are places and spaces that I can call home. Like how I have considered Antique as one of my homes, even if I do not stay there anymore. I also consider Guimaras my home, as it was where I grew up, and where Mama’s parcel of land is, and where she is buried.

But when I entered the portals of the University of the Philippines Visayas, I was not ready to leave my other home, Iloilo City. For four months, I would travel from Mohon Terminal via modernized jeep to Box 1 in Miag-ao and walk towards my classes in CFOS, CAS, and CM.

Now that I am moving finally to Miag-ao where would I spend my next days pursuing and completing my bachelor’s degree in Community Development, with a plan to double major in Psychology, I feel scared and sad. I was advised by my psychiatric doctor, Doc Victor Amantillo, to be realistic in my pursuits and in my decisions, and one of the examples of being realistic, is to stay close and near to UPV.

I’m finally moving to Miag-ao this week.

And though, before, I felt dislodged and displaced when I moved from Antique to Iloilo City, which I’ve written in my book Transience: A Journey on Grief and Coming Home, this time, I feel a little bit sad but assured.

I look forward to the moments when I could walk towards the shores near the Ocean Weather Laboratory, and where I could sit in silence, or swim in solitude.

I look forward to going to Miag-ao “tinda” and establish new sets of routines, and immerse myself with the community, and the culture. While I had routines which I have established in my years of stay in Villa, Arevalo — like going to the Arevalo Public Market and eating at my favorite carinderia, or buying grocery from Iloilo Supermart-Arevalo — there’s a certain level of comfort and assurance that I could build relationships and create memories while I live in Miag-ao.

I look forward to the moment when I would not be able to sleep, and I would walk to 7/11, the only open establishment in Miag-ao after 9PM. I look forward to riding the TRINX mountain bike which my sister encouraged for me to bring to Miag-ao. And I look forward to the new SM Hypermarket that’s slowly being built, brick by brick.

While there are things and moments that I look forward, there are also things that I would miss terribly in my access and my convenience in Iloilo City. I will miss the times when I would go to SM City, 30 minutes before the closing of the mall, and savor the feeling of peace. Or when I would eat at Jollibee Atria in the middle of the night, because I was craving for Chicken Joy.

But I have always considered myself a sojourner in the spaces where I occupy. And this move is another milestone, a sign that there’s life, because as per a World War Z line, movement is life. It means I am in pursuit of what the Lord impressed in my heart to pursue, and because I claim God’s promise that He will walk before me, in each of my journeys, I am assured of His guidance and His provision.

I hope Mama is proud of how I am able to handle the changes in my life.

Because I am giving a tap on my back for having the tenacity and the courage to follow where I am being led.

Most of all, I look forward to creating memories in Miag-ao, where I have been retracing the steps of my siblings, and my cousins, and where I would be immersed in the economic activity of a town and its people.

I’m not going to stay long in Miag-ao. I have a goal, and that goal is time-bound and specific. But in the future stories, and in the future essays that I would write, I am excited to make Miag-ao a big part of the setting, and the space where I could glean its perspective and its narrative. I am excited to experience how the place would become a blessing to my spiritual life, and to my personal life as well.

I guess, in God’s grand design, there’s a perfect reason why, at a time in my life when I am constantly changing and evolving, and that my mental health is being challenged with the application of my coping mechanisms, from all the years of psychotherapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy with Doc Amantillo, there’s a reason why I am moving from the bustling spaces in the city, to the terrain and the shores of Miag-ao.

By faith, I am leaving my comfort zone, and I am following God’s perfect will.

I am also glad that before I live full-time in Miag-ao, I was exposed to the beauty and the rich heritage of the town through my Arts1 class. I was able to experience and understand the context of the culture, including the Salakayan Festival.

While I feel sad with leaving my apartment, a witness to my sleepless nights, and my breakdowns and meltdowns, and my lying on the tiled floor when I am anxious with everything that’s happening around me, I am also letting go. I am letting go of the memories, and the dreams that were caught as I hung three dreamcatchers, gifted by various special persons in my life.

In my move to Miag-ao, I carry with me the green dreamcatcher that was hung in Mama’s hospital room at Iloilo Mission Hospital, was discarded at the morgue, but was retrieved by Doc Tin’s med school classmate. That dreamcatcher, which I call, Mothership, will continue its task in Miag-ao — to catch my dreams for myself, my family, my community, and for the ministry.

I am ready for you Miag-ao.

*May the memories that we make be as sweet and perhaps, bitter and sad, with the ones that I make while in UPV.

#DogsofUPV

I keep counting the days, the months, and the moments when I could only stare at Mama’s photo on the Gallery of my phone. She’s gone. And it still hurts.

It’s been close to six months exactly since she passed away. It’s been months of curling up in my bed, remembering her last words to me to “continue” my life. It’s been close to six months of flashbacks of that moment in the hospital when I visited her on her 60^th birthday and she was already intubated. Every gasp of air was difficult for her. I held onto her ankles and subconsciously remember what my cousin Nene Jocelyn said when Lola Auring, Papa’s mother, was on her deathbed. Nene Jocelyn held Lola Auring’s ankle because she felt during that time that Lola Auring was going far far away and would never return.

I held onto Mama’s ankle on January 13, 2021 because that was the only part of her body that I felt was safe for me to touch. She was hooked up into all these tubes to help her breathe. I was scared to touch her hand because my grasp might dislodge the IV on her arm. So while I was alone with Mama in the room, I repeated over and over again, while holding her ankle, that we’re going to be okay. That we’re going to be fine.

Even if in reality we would never be okay. We would hurt a lot.

I never imagined that the pain of losing a loved one would make me feel sensitive to the losses of others. Every time I see women of Mama’s age, with grey hair and with a vibrant look on their faces, I feel envious. What if Mama is still alive today?

The thing is, I find it hard to continue my life around the fact that I lost her. There are days when I lose the will to move on from that staggering loss. I just lay on my bed, listen to my playlist that I made especially for her, and remember her voice.

I wish I could have saved our conversations on my phone. I wish I could have taken more pictures of her. I wish we could have taken more selfies. I wish we had more time to walk early in the morning towards the beach, and talk about her childhood and her family, her frustrations, and her dreams.

But I try to deal with the fact that the only thing that I can do in this season of my life is to live a life worth living, fighting to the very end just like what she did when she was undergoing treatment for the big C.

Last month, it was my first time to celebrate my birthday without her around in this world. I was ready to die. For months, I had been collecting and saving my prescribed sedatives and the night before my birthday, I was planning to finally end it all and “go up North”.

For years, I have always felt depressive around my birthday because I feel like my life has not amounted to anything. The night when I was planning to end it all, memories of Mama keep flashing back. I never knew the power of the word “continue” when she uttered it while she was lying on her hospital bed and I was sitting beside her, would mean so much to me. I thought at that time, it was just one of her “habilin”. And as naïve as I was with how her illness was worsening at the time, I truly felt that she was going to get better.

What pains me most after all these months is that in my mind, I always kept saying that death is what I deserve because of all the things that I did in my life. But it felt like when I was the one who deserved to die, my Mother took that place for me instead.

This is probably why I need cognitive behavioural therapy. Sometimes, my brain keeps playing tricks on me.

Sometimes, I just go to my psychiatric doctor, Doctor Victor Amantillo, because I need someone to cry to without judging the reasons for why I weep. Oftentimes, I look forward to seeing Doc Amantillo because I could talk to him about my memories with Mama and I would not feel that I am a broken record, always reliving the last few remaining months that I spent with her.

There are times when I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m scared to not remember Mama anymore. So I listen to her voice in one of her videos, or in one of my voice memos and I find solace and comfort that I get to hear her and listen to her still. I find comfort in the fact that I have access to a memory of her, albeit digitally stored.

As I write this entry of another update about my grief, and the things that I do in order to make it one more day, I keep thinking of the many memories that I have with my Mother growing up. And I have become aware of the hazy fragments of memories that I have with her because the strongest memories that remain was during the last four years that I spent time with her.

A few nights ago, I watched Nomadland, a movie which stars Frances McDormand. The story revolves around a woman who became a nomad after the death of her husband. She lived in her RV truck and would travel all over the United States to work on jobs. Towards the end of the movie, Bob, one of the people whom she meets, talks about his son’s suicide. And then he spoke these words:

“One of the things I love most about this life is that there’s no final goodbye. You know, I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I don’t ever say a final goodbye. I always just say, “I’ll see you down the road.” And I do. And whether it’s a month, or a year, or sometimes years, I see them again.”

There’s an ache left in my heart, a gaping hole that could never be filled by someone or something after I lost my Mother.

I’d like to believe that I’m going to see my Mother down the road someday. Even if it hurts, I rest in the hope and promise that I will see her again.

And when I do, I will tell her of the days when it was easier for me to give up and take all those sedatives that I’ve been keeping, but I chose to fight for my life every single day because I’ve seen her never lose the fight.

I guess this is called being alive. You hurt, because you live. And that’s perfectly okay.