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Sunday, June 25, 2006
Cariño: Sitting with Auntie Gerry
By Linda Grace Cariño
Paradigm Shift
THERE are some wakes where you feel like you're just sitting, visiting, keeping company with the one who died. I'm uncertain how that happens? I just feel that some wakes are like that. Such was the feeling at Auntie Gerry's last Tuesday as we paid our last respects to an aunt, Gerarda Macliing Hamada. She had passed in Canada the week before and was brought home for her final rest.
As with many wakes, sitting with Auntie Gerry was an occasion to see and catch up with family whom, unfortunately, one seems to bump into only at wakes (we have to correct that). Rey Rimando, who counts as family in my highly extended one, was of course there, as was Etot Tamayo, the incorrigible Domcie Cimatu, Marilou Guieb, and a slew of relatives and friends? It was good to touch base with Balik Baguio cousins Jenny and Lionel, in from Canada for the services.
Amid the socializing, Rey remarked that what he remembered best about Auntie Gerry was her gentleness. "That's what she was," he said, "Such a gentle lady." He went on that she used to serve him and the gang the best coffee and Busurrca bread when they frequented the Hamada abode, then on Kisad. Myself having grown up next doors, I added that said bread was best with State Fair margarine, another Busurrca item. We marveled at how a mere margarine could actually taste so good.
At one point that evening, my eyes were drawn to a lovely frame of Auntie Gerry's pictures as taken at various points in her life. Right smack center of the frame was an achingly young and pretty lass, hair upswept and beaded, looking at the camera with some puzzlement. The same picture was printed on the last page of the book containing her funeral rites, behind the page where one of her husband's poems to her is found. I cannot tell which is more beautiful, the picture or Uncle Sinai's poem. Here it is.
Often
To Gerry, My Wife
Days, I shall gaze, as I love, at sunset skies
Over green hills ever fond to my dreams;
I shall wander along tree-lined footpaths
To many a mountain valley dear to me;
Even and nights, crispy cold, I shall sit by a log fire, lazily remembering,
And think I hear me again the eddying bubble
Of a canyon river, in the moonlight rushing on,
Or the distant soughing of lonely pines
On bleak mountain tops before a sweeping wind ?
All these tugging at my poor, sentimental heart,
As often, the warmth of love for you
Shall overrun and suffuse my being,
As often, you, by my side, I shall draw
And press loveliness close to me, oft to feel the comforting boon that you?re my own;
For it isn't truly I can love beauty
If in my inmost self I loved not thee.
Mainit 1948
Sinai C. Hamada+
And since the truth is that such masterful words to honor the gentle Gerry can hardly be touched, let me put a salutary period to both writer and muse right about here.
(June 25, 2006 issue)
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