Mami (Why I celebrate women's day)

There is a need to write about Mami – my grandmother. I feel writing about her now perhaps because these are also the days that my spirit seems to have been slowly, but undeniably, vaporizing into an assured nothingness that doesn’t give back what it has taken or leave a little piece behind of what it has snatched. I need to write about Mami because I need to remember. I need to be fully alive again what is slowly dying. I need to write about Mami because I am afraid. And I want to cry and melt and dissolve into my basic substance but I cannot. Not right now. Not for now. I need to write about Mami because I am feeling a little lost and I need to find my way back before I disappear completely.

I’ve always said that the reason for a big part of my being today is because I grew up with her. I will always say that I am feminist even though the label is open to so much argument and opens myself up to utmost questioning and excoriation. I will always say that I am feminist for the simple reason that whatever happens, my view of women will always be different (oppositional at times) to how the current world constructs a woman to be. I will always say that I am feminist because of Mami.

But this is no news to people around me.

Still, another expression of my indebtedness to my grandmother has something to do with how I am able to do things. I need to write about Mami because I need to remember. I need to remember that the days I spent with her as a child were the most fruitful and amazing and creative days of my life. And I need to write this down to be able to see my way back. I’ve been getting myself lost in this sinuous present. Most of the time I just wander aimlessly though with a tenacious feeling that I have a goal. Many times the ability to feel that I am still here is weakened by the necessity to live. All too often, that need to live softly snuffs the fire out of me.

The spirit is like fire, I guess. It is the fire that enables one to create. It is the fire that enables one to go on. It is what makes happiness a possibility. It makes me…fireless then to not even have the courage to cry and create tears and go on being happy by feeling sadness.

I needed to write about Mami because I suddenly remembered her. And with that remembrance of her, I also saw myself as a child. Lying on my stomach on the floor, deep in thought and with a pen in hand, constructing the unimaginable on paper. It was way past midnight and all was quiet. Mami was there sound asleep. I am pretty sure that the next day, when she awakes and goes about her daily routine, part of it would be to ready more scratch papers and pens for me. Urging me to do more without imposing. Telling me to create endlessly without reason.

I suddenly remembered Mami tonight and managed to sneak a few words that are officially owned by that which defines me at present – almost lost, almost nothing, almost the disappeared.

I remembered Mami and I am still here. For now.

(QC June 28, 2010 122am)

Flory

Today a good friend died. And I’m so far away I couldn’t even bid my last goodbye. No way of telling her loved ones that things are going to be all right. And they will be. After infinite moments of time spent in oblivious longing. Things are going to be as they should be. They should. There’s no other way of dealing with loss except to try to accept that a permanent hole is left when someone dear to us had breathed its last.

I’m so far away and that’s why the pain is greater. Perhaps, because sorrow finds no consolation in nearby friends who share the same feeling. There is sadness but it couldn’t find a proper venue to be heard. Sadness needs to be heard. It’s the only way to let it go. That’s why it’s more painful to hear one’s own sadness. It just bounces back to where it came from. It never finds rest in someone else’s caring embrace.

Dying is a leaving of the space in the lives of those touched that had always been reserved for that person who passed. That space becomes permanently erased and it is not emptiness that remains, but nothingness. Imagine when so many beloved have moved on in one person’s life, all that will be left of that person who grieves is a disintegrating presence until the nothing fully overcomes. Thank God for memories. The filler of voids that human being’s frailty creates. Mortality is intuitive. It creates imprints of time in one’s head so that nothing completely devours the heart. Not even loss, or sadness, or death.

Missing a colleague, a good friend, a ninang
February 9, 2011
3 AM
AkNZ