Saying goodbye

[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]

[av_heading heading=’ JUST ANOTHER DAY ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY LUIS BUENAFLOR JR.
[/av_heading]

[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
Monday, November 6, 2017
[/av_textblock]

[av_textblock size=’18’ font_color=” color=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
All souls last forever
so we need never fear goodbye
a kiss when I must go
No tears
in time
we kiss
Hello…

– Jessica Harper from “Phantom of the Paradise”

THIS IS A very personal column and I do apologize for it but I feel I have to express my grief. Please just indulge me.

How does one say goodbye to someone you love knowing that it’s the last time you will do it? With great sadness, I suppose. Perhaps the fact that you can’t say goodbye in person cuts the knife even deeper, the pain lingers and you’re fully aware that it will remain.

In time you wish the pain will go away, fade into oblivion perhaps. But you know this really will not happen. A moment of solitude or something familiar will always remind you and the pain comes rushing back.

So how does one take comfort and confine the painful memories into the dustbin of memories you want to forget and just remember as something from a distance?

My mother passed away some 15 years ago and to this day the pain remains. Although I have moved forward and accepted the fact that “all things must pass”, the painful memory lingers.

It takes great effort just to visit her and my father’s graves at Christ the King Memorial Park and leaving always brings certain sadness.

And did I mention that my father passed away just a month after my mother died, yes some 15 years ago moi lost both parents in just a month’s span.

Don’t worry, I’m not doing a Noynoy Aquino and come out with a stupid self-serving statement like “Patas na tayo.”

Losing a parent or both is not something you equate with paying a debt or responsibility; only a nincompoop oozing with apathy i.e. Noynoy Aquino would do that.

When my mother passed away her elder sister took moi and my siblings under her wing. Well she has actually been taking care of us including my mother even when she was still very much alive.

Moi always considers my mother’s sister or my Tita as my second mother as she has always treated me like her son, including all the lectures and reprimands as any mother would do to a particularly “naughty son” and moi uses the word “naughty” liberally.

When moi was a schoolboy summer vacations were always something to look forward to as that would mean spending it with my favorite Tita in Manila.

Finally “breaking free” figuratively from the “chains” of conservative Iloilo and as a “free-spirited” adventurer in Manila moi stayed with her till I could stand on my own.

The times I lived with my Tita she really took care of moi, maybe even spoiled me as she was kind and very generous not only with love but materially as well.

Let me put it this way: she lived in Ayala Alabang, one of the very first residents of that bastion of “old money” and that says a lot.

Since retiring and going back to Iloilo City after almost three decades away, my contact with her has not been regular anymore; one can even say almost nil.

Let me tell you, waking up and reading on Facebook that someone you love dearly has just passed away is not a good way to start the day, in fact moi would not endorse it.

My mother’s sister, my Tita, and I say this with pride, my second mother, just passed away Wednesday last week, Nov. 1. The timing was uncanny – a day when all the natives of these islands trooped to the cemetery to remember and celebrate the day with their dear departed ones.

Well, she always had a flair for a subtle but grand entrance so what better way to leave this world with yet another subtle but grand exit.

I will miss you terribly, Tita, and moi grieves in solitude with no fanfare. I know you would love that.

“I have no clever or profound statement to say nor pictures to post, all I can say is I lost my mother again and it hurts like hell.” So there. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
[/av_textblock]

[/av_one_full]