Post mortems

It was Monday and the  first work day after the terrible onslaught of Ondoy.   I indulged myself reading 3 different local newspapers to update me of the latest. After a very depressing week of tragedy, sleep deprivation,  and no electricity, I decided to treat myself with a Starbucks coffee and breakfast.  “I deserve it”, I mused, as I drowned myself  in the papers with a steaming cup of macchiato.

Our street after Ondoy dumped his fury.

After digesting every headline and editorial of those newspapers, I just found myself in tears. God! I really did cry!  My heart ached for my countrymen  who lost more than a refrigerator, a car, and wooden fixtures.  Many had lost irreplaceable lives of their family and loved ones.   As I skim through the photos in print, grief, tragedy, and pain are but understatements  sketched on the faces of Ondoy victims.

When I realized that tears swelled up my eyes,  I noticed that my coffee was not as comforting.  I am but one of the fortunate ones to have survived  unscathed. And there I was reading the papers, in an expensive coffee shop, as if like a mere spectator to this mega drama of Ondoy.

I think that was the most tasteless cup of coffee of my life.  My mind started to rewind to the days prior this cathartic breakfast…

After Ondoy dumped rain of gargantuan proportions in Manila, the first floor of our house in Pasig was waist-deep in flood water.  We found our refrigerator, car, and wooden fixtures floating in the mud-colored waters.  Electricity was already out.

The next morning, me and my husband decided to bring our family to Laguna – at my in-laws place.  We believe our evacuation is the safest decision for my baby of 7 months old.  My parents remained in our home in Pasig, to oversee our belongings.

Makeshift rafts made by residents of our barangay. My baby and me rode one of these life-savers when we evacuated Pasig.

Ondoy came, but the flood waters remained for around a month.  It was only a week ago that water inside our house had subsided.  The flood waters were gone in our barangay.  But some areas in Pasig, Cainta, Marikina, and Luzon still remained virtual water worlds. While my parents  are still fixing our Pasig home, my family and my baby shall be staying here in Laguna.

Many Filipinos had already expressed their postmortems of Ondoy, of  Pepeng, and Rosing, and Milenyo, and all of those natural calamities that proved nature’s fury.

I wonder if we will ever get the moral of the story.

A lesson on life and death (yet again)

“Man lives freely only by his readiness to die.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

I had a class last Jul 28 (Tue) that lasted  until 7:00 pm.  It was a laboratory class where my students need to cook and prepare some food products they needed to sell.

He was there as usual – working.  Not like other students who would just hide in a corner and play with a PSP or cell phone during lab hours.  I knew him for 4 years and his reputation as a hard-working student, jolly, funny, and nice is unquestionable.

” JM, dagdagan mo nga ng sauce etong luto ‘nyo.” (“JM, could you add more sauce to this dish).  With a smile, he immediately took my plate and did add more sauce.  “Ma’am mas mahal na ‘yan. May dagdag sauce e.” (“Ma’am, that’s more expensive, now that I added more sauce to it.), he chuckled.

The next morning, Jul 29 (Wed), the class president texted me and informed me that JM was in the hospital and in coma.  There had a been a blood clot in his brain stem.

So the sauce request was my last conversation with this fine gentleman of 19 years old.  He is in his senior year,  a graduating student.

I was able to visit him in the hospital when he was still in coma.  I told myself not to be carried away and cry.  But when I touched his hand, already with edema, tears were impossible to hold back.  I told him to wake up so that he can climb up the stage with his classmates, that his family and friends  is so eagerly waiting for him.

He passed away the night of  Aug 1 (Sat). The same date as with a great lady’s death – Pres. Cory Aquino.  Our Father called his son to finally come home.

Yet again, Death, like a thief in the night, had taken one of my students,  my student so young and life so promising.  I could hardly fathom the depth of the pain for the bereaved family.

After his death, life will go on for the rest of us.  For our lives are filled with papers to finish, piles of laundry to clean and endless schedules to meet.

JM, wherever you are, thank you for reminding us how fleeting life really is.  That papers and laundry and schedules are but mirages of what is truly relevant in life.  Thank you for reminding us that when stripped of everything else, it is the amount of love we had given by which we will be judged and remembered by people.  Thank you, JM, for letting us realize that we are but temporary and everything else in the world is. That what matters is to love the people who made us who we are and share that love to those who greatly need it.

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Rest easy, Michael…

Remember the time when the man in the mirror was bad?

Gone too soon indeed is the thriller that was Ben.

Rest easy,  Moonwalker.

Amen.

A simple tribute to Michael Joseph Jacskon (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

WORK… at random…

W - Waking up early.  Folding my husband’s sleeve every morning because he hates uneven folding.  Finishing my cup of coffee before baby starts to smile at me and makes me guilty to leave her all day.

 

O - Oh, you mean that paper! Well, I think I had thrown it somewhere.  Coming from a year-long leave creates memory gaps as deep as the Grand Canyon, you know.

 

R – Ready students??? Your professor is back!  Conducting lectures in front of you, class, is sheer bliss. (That is if I was able to prepare a lesson the day prior)

 

K - Kiss an empty calendar goodbye!  The schedule is darn hectic.  I even squeezed these few minutes to blog.  And I am loving it.

CT05: Pangarap Na Jackpot

WS#2

Libre naman ang mangarap diba? Hehe…

So I will make most of this opportunity and indulge myself with this list.

What will I do if I had won the lottery? Say, I bagged 180 million pesos (drool… drool)….

1.  Build our own house and put the right stuff in it. A 3-storey house with like, ahum… a gazillion rooms hehe… so that living space will never be an issue anymore.  A house with a complete theater system, with swimming pool and jacuzzi, a big room for a library, a complete set of kitchen, and a comfy master bed room with a breath taking  view (A beach front or the city landscape will do just fine).   You know, the type of houses you see in MTV Cribs, where they feature celebrity homes…. you get the picture…

2.  I will buy a family car. So that I can take my baby wherever and whenever! A Toyota Land Cruiser will do wahaha!!!

3.  I will have a new complete set of wardrobe! With accessories, bags, and shoes  to go with it, mind you.  From Donna Karan  to Esprit clothes.  Prada and Naturalizer shoes.  Braun Buffel leather bags.  Gahd! I feel tingly all over… wehehe.

4.  Tour the world!!! I dream of setting foot on the land of the pyramids,   have a pilgrimage in the Holy Land, hear mass at St. Peter’s Square, burn my skin in Bora Bora, dive the Great Barrier Reef, and  have a  helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon!  Can we go packing now?!

Ok…. So let me jolt myself back to reality now.

Perhaps some people already have or had done all these things.  But I always believed that the best things in life are still free.

Money can buy the husk, but never the kernel.