twelve years ago today, she left me inconsolable. now i celebrate her life and the dignity she wore like a crown. i still miss her, and look for her in late afternoons when the sun shines slanting from the window, and feel her in the crisp early morning air.
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originally posted 13 january 2009
there are grandmothers who are old gracefully, who deign to let age define the beauty of their youth. there are those fitter than most twenty-year-olds, who daily wrestle gravity and muscle pains into submission. my lola was big and she was soft and her voice cracked and she looked old.
i was a highschool senior when she died. a text message in the afternoon. my last glimpse of her had been months before at a hospital in cebu. she was conscious, barely able to move, unable to speak. and when she saw me, her voice gargled out syllables that couldn't find the words. i stood there with all my teenage bravado, a freebie orange scrunchie being worried in my grip. it had been my impromptu gift to her, and when i pressed it to her hand she raised an arm with tremendous effort just so she could nestle it on her hair. the long gray hair i loved. the visit was very brief, and the unshed emotions stuck to my throat as i walked the rooms and rooms and rooms of dying out of there. i didn't let myself consider that anything worse could happen after that. she would get better because she was infallible. she was as enduring to me as my memories.
she was unschooled and had never learned to write, yet with trembling hands it was my lola who drew me my very first private meeting with art. with red ink, she had teased the lines that formed a bearded man's face, and to my young eyes there was no amount of rabbits conjured out of a hat, no faster sleight of hand, that could top the magic it has always been for me. i witnessed reality shifted by the mere hands that formed a face and shaped a world of fascination in my heart. when i think of it now, i bow to the courage that led an unfamiliar hand to take a pen rarely used, a hand whose uncontrollable shaking was even then a permanent disability, all for the little girl who was too young to understand. she never knew, and i was never able to tell her, what that memory has meant to me every time my own hand has itched for release.
for days after the news my eyes were sore. it surprises me that after all these years i still dream of her, maybe not often, but they signal the mornings when i either wake up sobbing or aching with a loss, an inspired tenderness that could color the hours the dull redness of grief. i remember her face, her voice, animated by my dreams, her hand that alone had been able to calm the wild forest of my hair, that patiently combed my hair every morning as i waited for the school bus to arrive. the hand that was so lined, so old before its time. her hands, always her hands.
for months afterward, i was more than angry - i was sullen. i kept a face to the world but my heart was closed to God. my last act of love had been a free orange scrunchie, a touch between two hands, in the briefest of moments. He snatched her away, without me there, she must have felt so alone, and i didn't understand.
in all honesty, i still don't. i don't. whatever healing properties time claims to have, i find that there is simply no forgetting. the wound may be healed, but the throbbing will persist. for many, death is the end, the long and final note after the dirge. and as much as i want to look back and recognize the pattern He is drawing, my eyes remain clouded and the loss hasn't diminished in any way.
but what i do see, from the little i can glean, is that things did get better. i suffered a loss, but my heart didn't remain empty. what ignorance claims from me, i am being compensated for with hope. with hope that my eyes will continue to be opened to the goodness that He daily lets me see, if not to the pattern too dark for me understand.
i read somewhere that what we see is but the shadow of the things we do not see. i love what that means for me, for everyone who has suffered even a tiny bit of loss, the tiniest pinch of heartache. i know now that the love and the loss i claim to feel, or that i choose to feel for the moment, the point in time i childishly claim to be my own, is but a grain of sand to the eternal shoreline of His compassion. i know now that i can miss her still so acutely, but that because i have known the comfort of her hands, so now i can sleep all the more secure in His everlasting arms that hold me. forever.
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originally posted 13 january 2009
there are grandmothers who are old gracefully, who deign to let age define the beauty of their youth. there are those fitter than most twenty-year-olds, who daily wrestle gravity and muscle pains into submission. my lola was big and she was soft and her voice cracked and she looked old.
i was a highschool senior when she died. a text message in the afternoon. my last glimpse of her had been months before at a hospital in cebu. she was conscious, barely able to move, unable to speak. and when she saw me, her voice gargled out syllables that couldn't find the words. i stood there with all my teenage bravado, a freebie orange scrunchie being worried in my grip. it had been my impromptu gift to her, and when i pressed it to her hand she raised an arm with tremendous effort just so she could nestle it on her hair. the long gray hair i loved. the visit was very brief, and the unshed emotions stuck to my throat as i walked the rooms and rooms and rooms of dying out of there. i didn't let myself consider that anything worse could happen after that. she would get better because she was infallible. she was as enduring to me as my memories.
she was unschooled and had never learned to write, yet with trembling hands it was my lola who drew me my very first private meeting with art. with red ink, she had teased the lines that formed a bearded man's face, and to my young eyes there was no amount of rabbits conjured out of a hat, no faster sleight of hand, that could top the magic it has always been for me. i witnessed reality shifted by the mere hands that formed a face and shaped a world of fascination in my heart. when i think of it now, i bow to the courage that led an unfamiliar hand to take a pen rarely used, a hand whose uncontrollable shaking was even then a permanent disability, all for the little girl who was too young to understand. she never knew, and i was never able to tell her, what that memory has meant to me every time my own hand has itched for release.
for days after the news my eyes were sore. it surprises me that after all these years i still dream of her, maybe not often, but they signal the mornings when i either wake up sobbing or aching with a loss, an inspired tenderness that could color the hours the dull redness of grief. i remember her face, her voice, animated by my dreams, her hand that alone had been able to calm the wild forest of my hair, that patiently combed my hair every morning as i waited for the school bus to arrive. the hand that was so lined, so old before its time. her hands, always her hands.
for months afterward, i was more than angry - i was sullen. i kept a face to the world but my heart was closed to God. my last act of love had been a free orange scrunchie, a touch between two hands, in the briefest of moments. He snatched her away, without me there, she must have felt so alone, and i didn't understand.
in all honesty, i still don't. i don't. whatever healing properties time claims to have, i find that there is simply no forgetting. the wound may be healed, but the throbbing will persist. for many, death is the end, the long and final note after the dirge. and as much as i want to look back and recognize the pattern He is drawing, my eyes remain clouded and the loss hasn't diminished in any way.
but what i do see, from the little i can glean, is that things did get better. i suffered a loss, but my heart didn't remain empty. what ignorance claims from me, i am being compensated for with hope. with hope that my eyes will continue to be opened to the goodness that He daily lets me see, if not to the pattern too dark for me understand.
i read somewhere that what we see is but the shadow of the things we do not see. i love what that means for me, for everyone who has suffered even a tiny bit of loss, the tiniest pinch of heartache. i know now that the love and the loss i claim to feel, or that i choose to feel for the moment, the point in time i childishly claim to be my own, is but a grain of sand to the eternal shoreline of His compassion. i know now that i can miss her still so acutely, but that because i have known the comfort of her hands, so now i can sleep all the more secure in His everlasting arms that hold me. forever.
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