So long, partner. These were the words that came out so ever faintly from my lips as I threw in my flower offering to the still open grave of the one I called partner. She died just two days into the new year. She was our ninang (godmother) Dely -the matriarch of the David family. My wife's side of the family. The source of fine food recipes and of large sexy hips -don't they always go together? Am sure so. Am surrounded by living proofs!
(Note: The word sexy was a stern suggestion.)
But this is supposed to be a melo-dramatic post so I will digress.
Partner. This is what we called each other. Even if she was the biggest personality being the matriarch of the family, she was cool with it. It started when, during a vacation in Baguio, in an effort to make the most of our vacation, we decided to partner in not allowing it be spoiled by shopping or gimmicking out in the city. We rested. We let go of life's hang-ups. We vacationed.
So it was just Ninang, me and the ghost of the lodge. I read a book silently, she ate tupig silently, while the ghost just kept smiling at us silently, unseen.
Sure the family felt the loss big time. Ninang Dely was a second mother to many that losing her would have been very difficult, let alone losing her in Christmas time, at the turn of the year. But to many of us in the family, we felt that it was in God's time that she finally rested after a lingering illness. We knew that Ninang is perfectly blissful in God’s bosom, that place with unlimited happiness. And darn, unlimited vacation, too. (And ghosts...?)
I've been in many situations like this before where, in some, I've learned: in difficult times like death, or when life turns suddenly hopeless, or when nights are darkest, we all have a choice between being emotional (feeling sad and resigned) and being spiritual (expecting a miracle and trusting).
In those days when Ninang left us, we chose to be spiritual.
Henry van Dyke is spot-on in his poem Gone From My Sight:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me — not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, “There, she is gone,”
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”
And that is dying…
Enjoy your vacation, partner. You will be missed.
---------------
I miss my own Inang. Gone from my sight in 2003, but not from my heart in forever.
