fil-in-the-gap

In the last two years I’ve lost people I know, some more intimately than others. It had been difficult moving from grieving to feeling grateful to be alive and able to enjoy a birthday cake with my daughter or bond with my son while making a vegetarian meal.

For awhile, there was not a day I woke up without thinking about my friend Valerie who died in August 2020, two days before her birthday, our dear Alex who passed away suddenly in January 2021, just a week or two after we FaceTimed with him, and then a few weeks later, my Mango Tribe sister Ann, for whom eloquent tributes have been written that I could not read without bawling, and so I stopped. Then, my sister-in-law Techy, my Facebook friend; we weren’t close but I know she was also loved dearly. My beloved Aunt Belen from COVID in September 2021. She was my second mom, and our family has not recovered from her sudden death. My friend and martial arts guru Chris from a stroke in April 2021, while I was at the airport in Mexico waiting for my flight back to Chicago. Even my favorite frenemy Jeni T, much loved by some and avoided by others for her feisty and judgy nature. Most of them were too young to have been taken, four were fierce women with children left motherless. All of them full of life and love for others.

And then there are the faceless 400K in U.S. alone… mass shootings, senseless gun violence in Chicago… It is difficult not to live in fear that I might lose another human. Come to think of it, I have always had paranoia about losing loved ones ever since I was a self-absorbed teenager. I’m not sure why. Could be a movie or movies I saw. Love Story? Bobby Deerfield? Tagalog tearjerkers? When I was a little girl, I saw my dad die on television, and I cried so hard even though my mother kept reassuring me that it was not true. He’s right there on the sofa! He hugged me tight to prove he was still alive, while I struggled, pummeled him with my puny fists, made him promise to never die again. He did, anyway, in 2009. And then, my extraordinary mother followed, 9 years later.

Now I feel like I’m constantly trying to distract myself from falling into a grief hole and staying there.

I watch mindless movies. I hug and kiss my little doggy. Text heart and smiley face emojis to close friends. Like and love posts. Raise fist emojis to causes I believe in, go to rallies, teach, sing, drink, shop, travel, eat out, clean the house, wipe sticky substance from the fridge door handle left by a son with such a mutant power. All this to keep me from imagining my wrists slashed, the cuts vertical, the flesh raw and bloodless as if I’m already dead.

I think about death and dying a lot while living. I want to say, shhh –be quiet. Be grateful. Stop. I kiss my husband’s lips passionately as if his breath is gold in my mouth because it is. It kills me to think about the five spoons of sugar he put in his coffee, the T-bone steak he ordered at the diner, the stresses he has at work, the kids not knowing their boundaries with him because he never established any. It kills me. I am dead already. But I don’t want to die. Not really. I’ve spent too much on healthcare to just stop wanting to live.

Thank goddess for Wellbutrin, therapy, close friends who check in, some dealing with great losses themselves. And although I am not as brave as I would have loved to be, I am also not weak. I only wish for a moratorium on all the death and dying for now please.

I think about all this as I get ready to go get my mammogram done this morning. Wish me well.

Please click on the link below! Please be mindful of your time zone 😜❤️

https://youtube.com/channel/UCjPamgCSAffKyPVUIPxUVhg

Bus ride

When I was little, members of my family would take me on these endless bus rides. Mostly my grandpa, or apo, as strangers and family alike called him. I remember how comforting, as if I am being cradled and rocked gently, sweetly by invisible arms. I’m not the kid who asked if we were there yet. I never did want to get there, wherever “there” may be. I only wanted to stay where I was, seated on the cushioned bench, leaning against a hard wooden back slatted tightly together, the uneven edges pushing against flesh. I loved it! Watching the sun slowly paint the sky red from behind the mountains, the rice fields glowing, the vendors at every stop hawking food and souvenirs – a keychain, a toy with moving parts… Some too young yet faces already weathered, smiling a jaded smile, skin burnt dark by the unforgiving tropical sun.

I remember my sweet grandfather, so full of love for me and I for him. His face beamed whenever he saw me and all the other cousins were resigned to the thought that I am the favorite. So much unconditional love…

The promise of rain makes my body ache. Barometric drop. Barometric rise. Humidity that seeps into my skin and wraps my joints in a pin-studded elastic. It’s like a punishment each time. Trapped in a storybook nightmare with no one to nudge me out of my comic frame. Have you had those dreams? When you wake up before your body does and you can’t move a limb, not even a finger? You see the light from the street lamp peering through the curtains, the vague outline of the clock above the door. You can hear the sound of the fan whirring, your husband snoring like the night before. You are in the room with these sights and sounds, and yet you are not there. I remember sitting on a wheelbarrow as a child, watching my friends play, but my old people joints wouldn’t let me. Juvenile arthritis, the doctor said. Well, even diseases grow up, it seems. I’m old but the pain is new each time.

Some days I can’t fake it. This living like I want it. Can’t access my sane brain neath the pain. All you can do is distract yourself. Breath and play scrabble on your phone. Check on IG posts by your family and friends. Summon that smile. But then another kind of pain rises. The kind you can’t really feel.

Sirens sound like ululating ghosts. These troubles in my head are open wounds, throbbing needlessly, swallowing sleep, decapitating time.