I HAVE frequented the “Dakung Krus” at the Carreta Cemetery during All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. As I got older, I realized that this is the least I could do to a daughter that I only saw in a photograph and whose burial I wasn’t around to preside over. Even her grave is gone, lost to years of neglect and to a cemetery whose setup does not have any respect for tradition.
The “Dakung Krus” is where candles are lit for souls like that of my daughter, whom my family named Marie Stephanie. She was the one in the photo wrapped in pink diapers and placed on a white maternity bed, her eyes closed and her pretty face marred by a blue patch, a symptom of the illness that snuffed out her life.
A couple of years ago, I brought my two sons to Carreta to light candles on the graves of my father and my sister-in-law (we could not find the grave of my brother-in-law), and at the “Dakung Krus.” I had by then started telling them about their older sister, who would already have been married now (she was born dead in 1986, during the tumultuous times of the revolutionary movement in Cebu).
Her mother, “Ivy” died in the mid-’90s while giving birth to her third child. After Marie Stephanie was born, she went home to Sapangdaku and few years later married a military man. I was there maintaining a safe distance when she was buried at the Calamba cemetery. I would have wanted to light candles on her grave now but I could no longer remember its specific location.
The last time I saw “Ivy” was when we tried solving the problem of her pregnancy. I had a group (we called it a “collective”) at that time who advised us to have the pregnancy aborted. A friend accompanied her to an abortionist who refused to do the abortion because “Ivy” was young and had the resources to raise a child. They ended up going to a fake abortionist instead.
I was arrested while trying to make it to our scheduled meeting in Sapangdaku. She left for Mindanao but went back when it became apparent the abortion wasn’t successful. By that time I was already in another province. It was there where I received news of Marie Stephanie’s fate and got her photo. When I got back to the mainstream of society years later, I could no longer find Marie Stephanie’s grave at the Carreta cemetery.
How would that child have grown had she lived? That’s a question that I often tried answering using my imagination. No doubt she would have been a pretty girl because her mother was pretty (the child is usually an improvement of the parents, right?). That’s why I also think she would already have been married now.
Inside the compound of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Minglanilla is a monument dedicated to the victims of abortion. When I was younger, I actually didn’t give a damn about that issue. But now, I am against the practice simply because life is precious. I would have already been a father in the ‘80s but didn’t get the chance because Marie Stephanie was born dead. Being a father is great.
So I won’t tire writing about Marie Stephanie during All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and of the lessons I learned from her short life.