After saying a prayer and recounting all the struggles my great grand-Aunt endured as she hit her golden years and wrestled mightily with death two weeks after we took her off life support, I walked over to my grandfather's and his parents' graves. They're on the same rectangle of land, headstones completely different from the rest. Theirs isn't marble, but stone. Well, my grandfather's is stone bricks behind metal letters, while my great grandparents have marble slabs engraved with their names stuck on large stone pieces. I never met my grandfather, he died when my mom was in High School, so I pretty much grew up with my great grandparents for the first three or four years of my life.
Mama, my great grandmother, was always strict, always proper, always disappointed in everything. For her, there was always something to do. Even when the Alzheimer's began to take her, and her scoliosis started inhibiting her movement so that she was confined to a wheelchair, she needed something to do. When I was a little girl, she'd be outside raking leaves, sweeping the garden, or puttering about the dining room arranging and rearranging the cutlery on the shelves and in the cabinets. I don't ever remember her sitting down to watch TV for more than an hour. But as she got older, and the brooms seemed harder to handle, and the glasses would begin to slip from her hands, she would spend more and more time out on the veranda with my great grandfather. She would still arrange and rearrange all the magazines on the table, or if not, then the plastic flowers. Other times she'd sit there with my great grandfather, chatting and looking at their garden. The swing was gone by now, to make room for their son's and grandchildren's cars, the trees were gone, too. I miss that swing as much as I miss them. Mama died in 2014, Lolo (Great grandfather) in 2009.
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| Trying to hold on to the past |
Lolo, on the other hand, was always, ALWAYS, happy go lucky. He was always ready with a story, a joke, a smile, and a multiplication problem for me. He made me a playhouse when I was two, it stayed there until I was seven, even when we moved to another island and I'd only see them on summer vacations. He would make little wooden trinkets in his small workshop, and always sneak me a chocolate bar or extra candy when Mama was not looking. He used to wake up at three in the morning to go walking at the boulevard and watch the sunrise. Because according to him, "Dumaguete has the best sunrises in the country". I remember, if he wasn't working in his wooden shop, he'd be on his rocking chair, either napping, or listening to the radio with his bright yellow radio-earphones. He was always updated with everything, he knew everyone, plus, he was a WWII Veteran. But Old Age came, like it always does, and he began forgetting the geography of the country, so he bought himself a map. Then when he could not recite the poem "Trees", he'd make me or someone else recite it for him. He liked old songs, and the lamest jokes, and sweet chili sauce; and I miss him so dearly because I never got to ask about the war. I never got to ask about his childhood, and if he always liked track and field. He died before I graduated from the school he and my great grandmother sacrificed the best years of their life for.
When I graduated, Mama couldn't even recognize me anymore. She had no idea who anyone was. I do not know why I am writing this, I do not know if you will like reading about this sad, sappy story of a grandchild who never got the answers to her questions because she never thought to ask, but it's here, and I guess all I really want to say is... do the asking while you can, because ghosts can't answer those questions.
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