Sunday, April 13, 2008 Gueco: Happy Birthday my dear mama darling! By Malu T. Gueco Aslagan
ON APRIL 26, you would turn 91 years old if you were still alive. How I terribly miss you. Your voice, tender caress and encouraging presence.
As I sit in my chair this morning, the old film called "Yesterday's Memories" slowly unfolds like a movie flashback rolling before my very eyes. I see the dimly lighted scene of your last day on earth.
On that gray November afternoon in 1979, the doctors at Makati Medical Center were racing to revive your heartbeats.
Every time they pressed the electrical pads on you, I felt they were smashing my heart too. Thereafter, you entered into a comatose state from 3:00 to 7:15 p.m.
Auntie Daling, your sister, whispered in my ear, "Approach her...she loves you very much...she might still wake up..."
Mama, I tried to stir you into wakefulness. Clutching your hand...kissing your forehead...all my muscles struggled to snatch you away from the jaws of Death.
Woe and alas! The Angel of Death won. You breathed your last gasp around 7:15 p.m. that night. How I fumbled to embrace you as your skin temperature changed into frozen ice. I have never felt so helpless in my life.
Thereafter, I went mad with sorrow, pounding my arms against the hospital walls until the nurses held me back. How grief can cut down the human spirit.
Cascading like a raging storm, the torturing questions struck like arrows on my mind.
Why didn't I stay by your side that morning?
Why did I still go to work?
Why did I presume that pneumonia is a simple illness?
So many regrets but not one thought could bring you back to life.
Burial
Four days later, under overcast Tuesday skies, we brought your remains to Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina. They offered me a Valium sedative.
"No," I said," Mama Salem was my model of courage, I will be brave as her coffin is lowered into the grounds."
Black despair enveloped my being afterwards for a long, long time.
2008
Today in 2008, I sigh as I remember your birthday. Likewise, I gather the harvest from the vineyard of living and dying. Affectionately, I reminisce about your great loving ways.
Remembering your comforting embrace...how you happily cooked my favorite "torta" and "bulanglang" dishes...how on my high school graduation day, you crossed the wooden barrier/restriction placed by the Benedictine nuns, just to place a white sampaguita lei on my neck...how you bought me a pair of yellow slippers for my November 14 birthday which we found later among your belongings after your death.
What a journey for an only daughter like me. Through the years, grief has lessened its grip on my soul. Soothingly, I have learned to breathe in the winds of grace and serenity.
Message
Mama Darling, your love is imprinted all over my heart; your compassion inspires me to be kind everyday; truly, your courage is stamped in my go-go spirits now. Please know that I am doing well as a writer/artist and I bloom in love always.
Till we meet again in the land of eternal bliss where we will never be apart again.
Caluguran daca...dacal a salamat pu...HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY SWEETEST MAMA SALEM S. GUECO.
