More Mario memories

Indulge me, please, as this is the way I manage my grief over the loss of writer-patriot Mario Ignacio Miclat. I met him and his family a few years after they returned to the country following 15 years of political exile in China. I was assigned to write about him for The Sunday Times Magazine, supplement of the then Gokongwei-owned The Manila Times. I don't have a copy anymore of my article, but I do recall the magazine cover of that issue--two photographs of Chinese landscape and architecture taken by Mario himself. I vaguely remember the article's title as "Bayan-bayanan sa Beijing." What struck me upon visiting their first home, a condo unit at BLISS Pag-asa in Quezon City, was how orderly and clean it was. Fast forward to the time they moved to another condo on Quezon Ave., QC. I entered the hallway and just perfunctorily left my walking cane on a corner. Then Mario showed up and in a strict and annoyed tone wondered aloud what the cane was doing on its spot. I realized that he was like my husband Rolly Fernandez in seeing to it there's a place for everything and everything's in its place. When the Miclats make a trip to Baguio in December during Alma Cruz Miclat's birth month, instead of us treating them to a meal, they play gracious hosts to us. In the inner group are Mario's fellow UP academics Del Tolentino and Ben Tapang and their family friend Mitos Benitez. Over Japanese dinner at Hamada at the Baguio Country Club, we used to watch Raj's antics. Talk would last until the restaurant's closing time. In this photo Mario is shown with his Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas award for his lifetime's literary output and with his family and Church Cafe confreres. From left are Mario, Alma, Raj in the arms of mother Banaue Miclat-Janssen, Fe and Pastor Sunil Stephens, Roger and Fe Mangahas and myself. Happy times--so many to look back on to lessen the sting of his departure.

Eating away my grief

"In existence, I think one’s mother is, generally speaking, the strangest, most unpredictable and elusive person one meets." — Marguerite Duras

Gliceria Yatco Dula in 1946

Mommy and I didn’t have the most buoyantly cheerful of mother-daughter relationships. But whatever differences we had, things were always patched up by food, especially food prepared and cooked by her.

Since she died last May, I’ve dealt with her absence by filling it with food. Not just any kind of food but the kind that reminded me of what she used to serve the family on regular days and special occasions—humba, menudo, mechado, kare-kare, callos, adobo.

Because I still, by choice, don’t cook, I sought out the food of my childhood and youth in various restaurants in the resto hub that Barangay Kapitolyo in Pasig has become.

What put a halt to my overindulgence (dining alone in restaurants, even enjoying a buffet lunch by my lonesome) was a case of gastroenteritis and severe dehydration that landed me in the hospital.

My creatinine level shot up to the hundreds, my kidneys were doing only 24 percent of their function.

The doctors and medicines were able to turn the numbers around to normal in 24 hours during which I did a thorough examination of conscience. Certain realizations surfaced while I was flat on my back with an IV drip attached to my arm.

“Was it possible that I might be expressing my grief by overeating?” I asked my doctor.

She said it was, citing her own experience. When her own father died, her family made it a Sunday ritual to visit the grave, then go out for lunch every week for a year. Then they noticed they were all putting on weight and they decided to stop and just have monthly reunions.

I envied my sisters who could express their grief through copious tears shed when certain memories of Mommy were triggered—finding Mom’s hairband, preparing her clothes for giving away to charity (I kept her shawls and handkerchiefs for myself), praying for her soul’s repose at the family altar.

Mom’s ashes were inurned in a columbarium four months after her death. Again I watched my sisters cry their eyes out when the day came to say goodbye to the urn holding her remains.

But my tears wouldn’t come. I did look forward to the comida china afterwards where the family gathered around a table while a lazy Susan was swung clockwise and counterclockwise as we helped ourselves to food, food, glorious food—that was all in my mind and rumbling tummy.

I still am the object of fat lady jokes from the family although I’ve made the effort to cut down on binge eating, and do gentle exercises that aren’t hard on my joints.

Mommy Lolarga in a recent photo

“Why did I let myself go on your account?” I’d ask while gazing at Mommy’s picture when she was a slender young adult.

Maybe it was a form of rebellion going as far back as my teens. Mom kept her figure all her life, even after her eighth baby—I didn’t want to be like her.

She cooked like a pro—her morcon is irreplaceable. I never did the dutiful daughter role by learning how her dishes were done. She followed no recipe and relied on her estimates and instinct the way most of her generation did.

Mom was a loyal office worker. Her years of service ran to decades whereas I would leave at the first sign of discontent.

I guess I harbor a vestige of guilt. Her deathbed request to me was to give her a sip of Coca-Cola after a meal of broth and gelatin. I explained to her that because of the scarring in her guts, Coke would only hurt her so I practically forced water on her.

Bad girl! I should’ve, I should’ve given her a few sips of Coke! But I wouldn’t have been able to stand the sight of her cringing in pain from stomach spasms.

After I texted friends and family announcing Mommy’s death, Sr. Perla Macapinlac, ICM, of the House of Prayer in Baguio immediately responded: “My prayers for her and you. She has only gone home to God, but God’s home is everywhere in the universe, including our hearts, so your mother has not gone away. She is right there in your heart.”

And in my gut, I hasten to add, where Mommy, early in my life, left her indelible imprint.-- Elizabeth Lolarga

This article originally was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Lifestyle section on Oct. 30, 2016.

Mae remains gentle on our minds

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Two noontimes ago, I enjoyed a long, lingering lunch with Men Sta. Ana and Geraldine Maayo. Men is an economist and BusinessWorld columnist, Geraldine a retired university professor and writer of fiction. What binds us is the spirit of Mae Manalang, Men's wife who passed on in August last year.

I confessed to not having properly mourned for Mae. Going through my files yesterday, I found some still lifes I shot at the Manalang-Sta. Ana household in Kamias, Quezon City, where I visited her after one of her several hospitalizations back in 2014.

When you're with a force of life like Mae, it's hard to believe her body is weakening because she is an animated story-teller and can make her discomforts sound like the most exciting thing in the world to have. Why? Because they confirmed she was still alive. See? I'm having difficulty in being consistent with my tenses when referring to her.

Although the decorative wall pieces and those on the side table were, according to her then, selected and bought by Men on his out-of-town trips, they make me think of Mae, especially the color of the wall. I can still imagine her face set against it, she telling me of her work in the NGO world, of why there are multicolor pairs of Crocs in their house (to protect the soles of her feet from sharp objects), etc.

At yesterday's lunch, Mae hovered over our conversations. It felt like at any moment, she'd slide out of a corner of Cafe Via Mare at the UP Diliman campus and sing some Carole King or Carly Simon song. I suppose in a heart that's in denial like mine, she never really left...yet.

Leaves on grass

Highland living, if you steer clear of the smoggy Central Business District, permits walks. I take them with company or alone. Alone I can pace myself, pause, take note of what I tend to overlook. The morning's discovery are these curling, drying leaves on green grass. Looking at them and the shadows cast by trees unseen in the picture makes my mind churn. The thought is this--if left alone (not swept into a pile and thrown in the biodegradable bin), these fallen leaves will be absorbed by the earth, will enrich it and allow for new growth. Nothing spectacularly original about that thought. This "dying" with a purpose reminds me of Wendell Berry's exhortation: "Practice resurrection." To fellow blogger Padma Perez I owe another discovery: poet Berry and his simple yet powerful words.

The departed

Letters of sympathy are the hardest ones to write. It is a pitiless endeavor. Give this blogger a note of thanks, a birthday or get-well-soon-you're-missed message to dash off anytime. The family's personal flag of mourning has been flying half-mast for sometime since the death of Chiqui Barretto Server early this month. It seems it will continue flying that way till past Easter. This morning  my brother called from overseas to tell us his wife's 16-year-old nephew just  passed on to the next life. Cause of death: leukemia.

As is my wont these days, I'm on this cleaning spree (deleting messages to free up space for incoming and outgoing mail). The exercise has proven therapeutic. But half an hour ago, I chanced upon this note I had emailed to my godmother and cousin Jane Pearl Server-Banzhaf. We were exchanging letters. She just lost her husband Hans.  Two years later, she left us exactly 19 days after she turned 63.

If the thought isn't too irreverent, I can use this as template for similar letters that have to be written with more frequency as death is accepted as the living's constant companion. Meanwhile, hearts go on beating, a reminder this season that those who're left behind must keep on toasting in this manner: "Here's to life!"

Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 4:25 PM

Dearest Ninang Jane,

First of all, it's okay to cry and cry. I remember suppressing my tears when my Dad died in January 1992, trying to put up a brave front before my siblings and Mommy, and it wasn't till June of that same year, on Father's Day, when my article on him came out in the old Daily Globe, that an avalanche of tears fell.

I must have been in sixth grade when Hans came into our lives. I remember you and he standing on the lawn, you introducing each of us to him, and we went up shyly to shake his hand. He looked dazzlingly handsome, and you did make a fine pair. 

Through the years I would see him striding in that determined way of his and learning how to drive in Manila's traffic and being as barumbado as the worst truck driver. I think he picked up some Filipino cuss words, too. 

He was the one, at one post-Christmas reunion at Shorty and Lita's home, who yelled, after hearing the roll call of names of our nieces and nephews (Jongjong, Klengkleng, etc.), "Isn't there a Pekpek?" And Chiqui repeated the question while everyone roared in laughter. 

I remember him as moody and sometimes masungit, too, but we all have our days. Like I said in my previous email, the man I married is in many ways like your dearly and recently departed (Hans ran the Banzhaf residence with German efficiency). My pursuit of fine arts wouldn't be possible without Rolly taking upon himself the bulk of housekeeping chores that I must confess bore and depress me, if I have to do them all the time. 

I know the coming days and weeks will be difficult, but your friends and relatives will keep in touch through text and email to comfort you. Besides, you have all those beautiful children and grandchildren to remind you of what you and Hans had brought forth to this world.

 

Love,

B

 Photo of Jane from the collection of one of her three daughters