Alaala

(Me giving you your flowers.)

I’ve been gone a while.

Lola died March 13th, as I was flying to Phoenix for the weekend. She was in decline several days before, my dad says, and her body was too fragile to fight off an infection. That Friday was difficult. At the spring training game I saw another lola walking hand-in-hand with her anako, which naturally made me think of my dad at that age who the same buzz-cut. I didn’t cry until I remembered it later that evening and went to let the tears out in the bathroom at the restaurant.

Talking about the grief and loss is hard, partially because she is the closest relative I have lost. I don’t know how to act or what to say to friends. I feel like I’m not taking enough time to process things. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here. I know that I don’t want too much sympathy though. It’s nice to know that everyone cares but I wish people would ask about her instead of me. There’s a sensitivity or fear that I’m letting the loss be about me, when I would much rather it become an opportunity to remember her.

The sadness comes and goes in waves, just like Joan Didion wrote in The Year of Magical Thinking. I like the waves, and I wish I had all the time I needed to dive in and let them wash over me. Things that I know will feel so unimportant in a year are consuming my time and emotional energy. I’d like to take my elbow and shove them all to the bottom of my priority list. Too much thinking about myself and my problems.

I try to channel the emotions of grief into productivity, like an alchemist, using this experience as motivation to do things that (I hope) would make her proud; making promises to myself that I don’t know if I can keep. That’s how I’ve dealt with other losses. I wonder what drives me to act that way… It feels like the “right thing to do.” Another part of me wonders if I’m supposed to do the opposite. I mean, chill out a bit and remember her without it having to mean anything about my life. She was such a hard-worker, I find it tough to believe she would support that, haha.

My Lola was born before the second war, 1936 or 37? She never talked about what it was like to grow up during the Japanese occupation but I imagine she had memories which she never forgot and no curiosity of mine would drive me to ask her about them. Her family lived in Pangasinan, in the North East of the Philippines. They sold furniture and she later worked as an assembler for an electronic parts company with her best friend, Oni before following her to Hawaii in the sixties.

Lola had this classic immigrant dream of success in the States which is so unoriginal (for lack of a better word) that it loses a lot of the appreciation and respect it should demand. When she told me her story over the phone a few years back—I was working on a project for my Fil-Am history class—I felt the determination that possessed her to move her life here. She would have done anything to achieve that dream. It wasn’t so much running away from anything but running toward the goal, the family she wanted, the kids who would feel like they could do and be anything because everyone here could. What a gift. If anyone understood the meaning of self-respect in my family it was her, putting aside immediate comforts and securities and choosing the path filled with risk in hopes it would pay off.

While I feel this sense of responsibility to honor her legacy and not waste her sacrifices, I wonder occasionally about what it would be like to live in the Philippines, to think and live in her language. Would she think it’s funny that I want to move there? I wish I could call and ask.

Nothing I am writing feels good or appreciative enough.

I am making the urn for her to rest in.

Her favorite flower was an orchid,

I will paint vibrant Waling-waling and ask the diwata to let her hide within

graceful pink showers.

I’ll hope the flowers serve me better than these words do:

Alaala ng nakalipas, lubos nating mabatid.

Salamat sa pagmamahal at mga alaala.

Lingatan ko ang alaala natin dito.

You always smiled at me.

You never let me go hungry.

You always asked after my mother.

You called me “pretty anako,”

you made me beautiful.

End Note

Thank you to everyone who has supported me this month with or without knowing it. Please feel welcome to share your mga alaala with me if you feel inclined. It is important to remember our grandmothers and all relatives who can no longer tell their own stories.

I will be back next week, in accordance with one of the many promises I’ve made myself recently.