I catch myself complaining a lot, and 2018 was not a year that I was very positive about a lot of things. When life threw me for a loop, I bitched and moaned about it. A lot. And I can recognize venting and mourning loss, but I also have to acknowledge what a lucky son of a Barbie (I won’t curse at my mother today) I am.

In 2018:

1. I got to be there a lot more for what turned out to be our Nanay’s last year. 
2. I spent a lot of times with my friends, and made a few new ones.
3. I finally got to deal with my health, and found that there are some things you can turn the clock back on, and some facts you just have to accept for yourself.
4. I got to see semi familiar places with people I love. Ho Chi Minh for the first time, Cebu city and Tabuan’s inner workings, Korea in the dead of winter, Vigan in a storm, Siquijor and Dumaguete, Batanes.
5. I got to travel with our cousins for the first time and my heart could not have been more full at how wonderful people they’ve grown up to be, and how they’ve used their privilege to be better people than I’ll ever be.
6. I got to travel for the first time myself. It was mind numbingly reflective but also cathartic.
7. I changed how my room looked (sort of) and felt like a different person.

I feel like I need to list this down just so the next time I whine about how bad my situation is, I remember how much I actually got to experience and live in a challenging year.

Last year was certainly memorable and I survived it, albeit kicking and screaming.

And maybe I also need a wrap up to see what I have to look forward for to 2019, and Lord, I’m not challenging you on this, I know you’ve given me a whole lot and I am very grateful. I’m still breathing and most of the people I love are the same and mostly healthy. We got this, and I hope we all make it out alive this year.

Dear Nanay,

We were all home and got to spend Christmas together (except for Ann but you know she’s committed to the thing). We ate a bunch of things. Ninong taught most of us a game. The fathers drank whiskey, the kids (is it still kids if no one is younger than 21?) drank bottles of sweet wine.

You were still part of the raffle, and actually got to the end, but lost out to Joannaman. I bet if you did win you’d give it to us anyway like the year you did win the top prize.

Almost all the kids give gifts now so it took a good 15 minutes with several people walking around to just give away presents. Did you see the portrait we had made of you? It’s gorgeous and I think it really captured your spirit. The painting feels happy, like you always felt to me.

We miss you Nay, and I am curently typing this in the chair. Next to the bed that was yours wishing you were still napping here. As you would after a big lunch of Kare Kare, ribs and chicken lollipops.

It’s been so different without you but still we carry on. We learned from the best. It’s just so much better when you’re around.

Merry Christmas Nay.

Love,

Jody Anne

Another month, another wake. This time though, I am not the one offering my condolences but one of the people being offered theirs, because our family lost our Nanay.

She wasn’t young at 89. She had already outlived all other grandparents by at least 5 years. It wasn’t a surprise, as she had been in the hospital for around a month, and we had known when they found a mass that it wasn’t going to be long. We couldn’t go for treatment because of her age and already existing health issues, and we had resigned to just making her feel comfortable. We say it’s a blessing to have her out of pain, off the strong prescribed painkillers that made her groggy and sleep often.

But knowing she was going and seeing her gone are two different things. She is looking beautiful in the beige blouse she had specifically asked for. She has a lovely necklace from Rome they dressed her in, the colors of the makeup are colors she would have used in life.

Every now and then I want to reach over that glass bubble and shake her awake, tell her to enjoy the party being thrown in her honor, the people that have come out to say goodbye. This is the first time in a really long time that her grandkids are all together, being busy with school, work, and all the other small things that life makes you busy with.

But she’s not waking up. She’s going to miss everything from now on, and the person I’m smiling at saying to wake up is not her anymore. It’s just a shell that held her spirit and all that made her the magnetic, feisty, warm woman we all gravitated towards.

Her room already feels empty, because they took out the hospital bed she was in at my last visit. People keep joking about not wanting to go home because they don’t want her tapping on their shoulder or lying next to them on the foam mats laid out for our family to sleep shifts on.

For once I am not afraid of a presence because hers always brought me comfort. From the beginning she was always a source of good things. Of food and fun and all the glorious things that came to coming home to family and being surrounded by people that loved you unconditionally. We’re not the most vocal or the most affectionate but we’re there for each other. Even if sometimes we’re not 100% behind each venture, we show up.

And that was mainly her. She considered food something never to skimp on, living through World War II. That diets made you stupid because you went with less nourishment that equipped your brain less. She set the tone for all celebrations for decades to come, long after she herself stopped cooking in the kitchen.

I never got to sit with her to write down her specific tricks to recipes. It was mostly sitting together, asking her where she got her lovely new blouse or where she went or was going with her friends. And I was happy with that. Just being in her presence. Now though what are we to do?

Our Nanay was a one in a billion kind of woman and it will be hard to lose that heart, and we’ll be spending the next few days really just hoping to get to to goodbye without too much pain.