This blog is up for a year now. This started as a platform to write a tribute to Tita Vicky and her importance to my life and in how I process and adapt to my current situation. We are never perfect but it’s great to have someone who exemplify goodness, kindness and generosity.
As been said, she has always been someone who would give you her 99 even if she only had 100 left. Always there to help others but more importantly she finds greater sense of being when after lending a hand, you are able to stand up and help yourself.
I told my sisters last year that this was an end of an era of sorts. I felt that I no longer have an anchor or a reason to remain in Catmon, Malolos without them. We were but grateful transients to Tita Vix and Nana Puding’s arms and home. Now that they’re gone, that sense of permanence is this gloomy cloud I see, no matter how clear and blue the sky is, when I look up. I try not to let it bring me down, they would never allow it.
Since all of my sisters are abroad since 2005, I went home at least once a month and was some sort of newscaster for the Lolas. The time when I was there is a time to talk, celebrate life and every milestone we(my mom, sisters and I) reach. I could always sense that Nana Puding longed for moments like before, when the house was full of noise from kids with endless banter and childish laughter. Growing up and moving on is a painful lesson as protagonists in our lives but more so to the people who are left behind. Tita Vix and Nana Puding had kids, they have us. I believe they understood how and when it is to cut the proverbial umbilical cord. They never took it against us. I periodically came home not just to make sure their fine, but coming home also makes me feel that the rest of the world is alright, and in reciprocity, gives me a sense that I’m doing alright.
I’d sneak at the back door, she always keep it open during the days and only the trusted knows or dare to come to the back door. As a World War II vet, Tita Vicky is not one who startles easily or anything at all. Nana Puding, who was blind since birth, has this sharp sense of hearing. She was a person who’s only bright window to the world is a blaring AM radio with the modulated voice of the program host. She would always like it when visitors come in for a chat, to verify what she’d heard and listen to you some more. Tita Vicky, on the other hand, is always weary that I may have to go somewhere else and conscious of the time. I am, after all, is the family’s runner with errands and chores… I was their runner until they were gone, and I ran out of chores… and their runner no more.
Now, things have changed in ways that they seem to feel the same, like Golden City commercial plaza turning into Pure Gold (Catmon inside joke). But when in December last year, I went for Lugaw Tokwa’t Baboy (another Catmon / Malolos Crossing reference, sorry) with a friend, I passed by 33 Catmon and it looked strange. Gone are the plants I used to water everyday. The walkway I used to sweep every morning looked like a path I never crossed. Strangely like it’s a house of, not ghosts, but more of usurpers who were never witnesses to the happy life spent to a full age by two beautiful women. It was dark and detached. But Tita Vicky and Nana Puding are no longer there, no matter how one would like to believe. No amount of convincing is required to increase the ignorant credibility of a fraudulent hack who claim to physically cross this realm and of the spirits. Their good spirit, kindness and generosity is shared and will continually flow through the people they love and loves them. They are in my heart, memory and DNA. I act, react and interact as influenced by their example, as do my mom and my sisters.
They are defined by how they loved and no longer confined in Catmon.
danDAman 