Reflections from Paseo de Coro
I was not here last week. The preparations for Investing in Tech and Telecom Forum that we at Cebu Business Club organized last Friday where I also served as one of the three speakers and the two afternoons of lectures on the economy and real estate development after that gave me no time to write my column for last week.
Had I the time, I would have dwelt on the history and essence of Valentine’s and the need for everyone of us to find our own true love if we have to live happily ever after despite life’s never-ending trials.
I said five weeks ago after returning from almost two years of absence from CDN that it was not easy for me to face life caring for Ale with her cancer until her death and how I suffered more when my eldest daughter Leilani also became very ill with her lupus starting from just a couple of weeks after Ale’s death and died just a week before Ale’s first death anniversary.
Did I find solace and peace of mind after putting Ale and Lanie to their final resting place? No. In fact, the worst came instead when I could not find back my rhythm anymore both at work and in my sleep.
Days passed by when I just spent my time staring at nothing and looking at Ale’s picture in the small altar that I prepared for her in our living room. Outside, I pretended to look happy and contented but inside me I was tearing apart. Until one day I met a friend who gave me this advice after I told him how my sanity suffered after losing Ale.
My friend knew how hard it was for me to let go of Ale knowing how close and inseparable we were in all the seven years when she had cancer. He told me to visit again the places where Ale and I went on special occasions in which we really enjoyed so much the time being together and to spend again a night there alone praying and thinking of her only. That way, I’m supposed to learn to let go of Ale slowly and for her to do the same for me.
You see, I believe that she suffered even more leaving me and how she would have loved being with me always to help me with all my needs with my heart and hearing problems. It was two weeks after we put her to rest that I first dreamt of her. In my dream she suddenly appeared standing before me some three meters away.
With her eyes on my eyes, she simply said nothing, smiled a little, then walked slowly backward. She was turning left reluctantly when I suddenly woke up from my dream. It was then that I knew she felt so sad and worried about leaving me.
Following my friend’s advice, I told my family to be at a restaurant at the new Grand Con to celebrate her birthday after her death in May last year. It was there where we celebrated her last birthday in 2014 while she was alive. It was also there when I knew she knew it was going to be her last birthday after she drastically lost weight and felt tired most of the time since we celebrated my own birthday two months earlier in March. Indeed, just a month later in June her heart collapsed from the weight of the fluids that accumulated in her pericardium. She never recovered from that blow. She passed away five months later in October.
After we celebrated her birthday in the same place where she once was so happy giving her all to me, our kids and grandkids, I knew that the load I carried after losing her lightened a little. Following my friend’s advice, the next thing I did was to celebrate last Christmas alone in a room at the Waterfront Hotel praying and thinking of her only.
For it was in that hotel where my youngest daughter Dionaly who works there used to gather our family together to wait for the birth of the little child Jesus since she first learned her mother had cancer. After having done that, my load felt a little lighter.
Then last Saturday morning while preparing for my afternoon lecture, I suddenly remembered the same advice of my friend and rushed immediately to Mandarin Hotel near Ayala Commercial Center where we had once spent our Valentine’s Day just a couple of years ago. I arrived at the hotel in a few minutes only to find all rooms booked.
I pleaded to the lady serving me if there could still be way I could get a room. She understood my predicament as if poked by Ale. She went inside a room and came out a little while later with good but not so good news. There was a room they reserved for such an emergency but quite the pricey kind. I took it without second thoughts about the price. And so last Saturday, I was alone again in a hotel room praying and thinking only of her.
I only slept a little that night but still woke up refreshed and ready for the day. Then my load got a little lighter again. But much still remains, the reason why I still feel so lonely even with my family near me. In my classes, my lectures and presentations outside in forums or special group economic briefings, I always try to be jolly and joke a lot whenever I can. Still I feel once again so alone when I’ve finished with my turn and when I go home.
Indeed, I’m still struggling a little until now. Thanks to Facebook where I could easily express anything that I feel and get immediate feedback and support from my friends. Of course, I thank my family. They are always there with me, loving me and caring for me. Thank you, Bloom, Junjun and Diona and to my grandkids Julia, Jessica, Joshua, Calvin and Kharl. Most of all, thank you, Lord, for giving me my first great-grandchild in Jhona in exchange for losing Ale and Lanie. With him I feel very much alive again.
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