Remembering Nanay...
Oct. 13th, 2003 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darth_stitchIn about nine days, my grandmother, whom I affectionately refer to as Grandmother Duck or Nanay (Filipino for mom), will have been gone for one year.
She died of complications from her kidney ailment.
I still miss her.
We weren't very close while I was growing up. I was, in fact, much closer to my other grandmother (paternal side). Still, we had good memories together.
Nanay had a demented sense of humor, for example. When we were little, my brother and I used to scooch over to the other sib's bed (usually he scooched over to mine) and I'd tell him stories about our favorite superheroes in the dark. While we were giggling about the latest inane adventure of Iron Man (or Captain America), I spied this ghostly figure weaving its away into our room.
At least, it looked that way in the dark. Edward and I screeched for Mommy, obviously. And the "ghost" flipped off its blanket and ta-dah! It was Nanay, who couldn't sleep with all our giggling and talking, and decided to give us a right good scare.
Then, there was the time she chased me all over the house holding a live butiki (gecko) in her hand. What? I hate the bloody things - they drive me nuts. She knew it and proceeded to chase me all over the house anyway.
Ladies and gentlemen, NOW you know where I get MY demented sense of humor from.
Nanay also went all over the place. She could never keep still in the house. She was always traipsing off to Cavite, then to Makati, then to Mandaluyong. Imagine a 70-plus year old grandmother hopping off and on rickety jeepneys, smoke-belching buses driven by kamikaze drivers AND going across the River Pasig in a wooden, teeny ferryboat and you'll know what I mean. Ma knew better than to complain about her mother's relative age. To Mom, if Nanay could go all over Manila and beyond in the blink of an eye, that meant the old lady was healthy and happy and that contented her.
When I started to work, I always gave part of my paycheck to Nanay, who didn't have any income of her own. For whatever you want, I said.
Then, I lost my job and was in that limbo of job-hunting for the next one. Without me saying a word (and in fact, I never asked Nanay for anything, even as a child), she handed me a little money, which she got from her own children, so I had somthing to use.
And then, when I finally landed another job, I started giving her money all over again. It became a running joke between us. "When's your payday?" she'd ask. She was always delighted to get a little something from me, as she invariably ended up using it to buy the younger grandkids some little thing or the other. And I was just as delighted to make her happy. If there was one thing Nanay taught me, it was that it felt good to give to other people, without expecting anything in return.
Generosity is not one of my virtues, I'm afraid, having grown up a spoiled, first-born child, the only daughter of my parents and my paternal grandparents' first and much-wanted granddaughter. But Nanay taught me how good it was to give, to make other people happy by doing the little things. And I can never forget that.
Later on, that money went to help my mom buy medicine for Nanay's dialysis. Living in a Third-World country like the Philippines means that it's your own lookout when it comes to your old folks getting sick. And dialysis medicine is bloody expensive, not an easy thing for a middle-class family. What I hated most about Nanay's illness is how it slowly drained that vibrant, funny, energetic woman away, leaving practically nothing.
On the day Nanay died, we sped all the way to Cavite (where she was staying with her favorite son), to say goodbye, just before we would give her up to the funeral parlor. Out of the blue, this strange woman comes into the house, sees my grandmother lying still on her deathbed and throws herself at Nanay's side, wailing as if, for all the world, she was another daughter.
It turned out that Nanay quietly and secretly helped this woman out (a neighbor of theirs), by giving her a little money to buy rice and a few canned goods from time to time. The woman was, in effect, yet another "adopted" daughter of my grandmother's. And we never knew about this. We only learned about the whole thing just that day, when she was gone.
We all have our own beliefs for the dead. Like slipping coins over their eyes or in their hands as a payment for the Ferryman on the Other Side. I was the one who slipped the Ferryman's Due in my grandmother's hand. It was my last money - payday was still a week away - but I didn't care. It was my last gift to her.
We also believe that the spirit of the dead lingers on for forty days after death, before finally making its climb up to heaven. True to form, my Nanay went wandering all over the place again, appearing to relatives in the provinces and letting her presence be felt to her in-laws in America.
On that 40th day, I prayed my rosary and said my farewells to my grandmother. I was alone in the room. Suddenly, my room was filled with this sweet, fresh clean fragrance. Not a flower, not incense, not perfume. It reminded me of that passage in Tolkien, a scent borne of "new things," like what I'd always imagined athelas would smell like.
In that instant, I knew who was there. And I smiled and bade my Nanay a last good night.
She died of complications from her kidney ailment.
I still miss her.
We weren't very close while I was growing up. I was, in fact, much closer to my other grandmother (paternal side). Still, we had good memories together.
Nanay had a demented sense of humor, for example. When we were little, my brother and I used to scooch over to the other sib's bed (usually he scooched over to mine) and I'd tell him stories about our favorite superheroes in the dark. While we were giggling about the latest inane adventure of Iron Man (or Captain America), I spied this ghostly figure weaving its away into our room.
At least, it looked that way in the dark. Edward and I screeched for Mommy, obviously. And the "ghost" flipped off its blanket and ta-dah! It was Nanay, who couldn't sleep with all our giggling and talking, and decided to give us a right good scare.
Then, there was the time she chased me all over the house holding a live butiki (gecko) in her hand. What? I hate the bloody things - they drive me nuts. She knew it and proceeded to chase me all over the house anyway.
Ladies and gentlemen, NOW you know where I get MY demented sense of humor from.
Nanay also went all over the place. She could never keep still in the house. She was always traipsing off to Cavite, then to Makati, then to Mandaluyong. Imagine a 70-plus year old grandmother hopping off and on rickety jeepneys, smoke-belching buses driven by kamikaze drivers AND going across the River Pasig in a wooden, teeny ferryboat and you'll know what I mean. Ma knew better than to complain about her mother's relative age. To Mom, if Nanay could go all over Manila and beyond in the blink of an eye, that meant the old lady was healthy and happy and that contented her.
When I started to work, I always gave part of my paycheck to Nanay, who didn't have any income of her own. For whatever you want, I said.
Then, I lost my job and was in that limbo of job-hunting for the next one. Without me saying a word (and in fact, I never asked Nanay for anything, even as a child), she handed me a little money, which she got from her own children, so I had somthing to use.
And then, when I finally landed another job, I started giving her money all over again. It became a running joke between us. "When's your payday?" she'd ask. She was always delighted to get a little something from me, as she invariably ended up using it to buy the younger grandkids some little thing or the other. And I was just as delighted to make her happy. If there was one thing Nanay taught me, it was that it felt good to give to other people, without expecting anything in return.
Generosity is not one of my virtues, I'm afraid, having grown up a spoiled, first-born child, the only daughter of my parents and my paternal grandparents' first and much-wanted granddaughter. But Nanay taught me how good it was to give, to make other people happy by doing the little things. And I can never forget that.
Later on, that money went to help my mom buy medicine for Nanay's dialysis. Living in a Third-World country like the Philippines means that it's your own lookout when it comes to your old folks getting sick. And dialysis medicine is bloody expensive, not an easy thing for a middle-class family. What I hated most about Nanay's illness is how it slowly drained that vibrant, funny, energetic woman away, leaving practically nothing.
On the day Nanay died, we sped all the way to Cavite (where she was staying with her favorite son), to say goodbye, just before we would give her up to the funeral parlor. Out of the blue, this strange woman comes into the house, sees my grandmother lying still on her deathbed and throws herself at Nanay's side, wailing as if, for all the world, she was another daughter.
It turned out that Nanay quietly and secretly helped this woman out (a neighbor of theirs), by giving her a little money to buy rice and a few canned goods from time to time. The woman was, in effect, yet another "adopted" daughter of my grandmother's. And we never knew about this. We only learned about the whole thing just that day, when she was gone.
We all have our own beliefs for the dead. Like slipping coins over their eyes or in their hands as a payment for the Ferryman on the Other Side. I was the one who slipped the Ferryman's Due in my grandmother's hand. It was my last money - payday was still a week away - but I didn't care. It was my last gift to her.
We also believe that the spirit of the dead lingers on for forty days after death, before finally making its climb up to heaven. True to form, my Nanay went wandering all over the place again, appearing to relatives in the provinces and letting her presence be felt to her in-laws in America.
On that 40th day, I prayed my rosary and said my farewells to my grandmother. I was alone in the room. Suddenly, my room was filled with this sweet, fresh clean fragrance. Not a flower, not incense, not perfume. It reminded me of that passage in Tolkien, a scent borne of "new things," like what I'd always imagined athelas would smell like.
In that instant, I knew who was there. And I smiled and bade my Nanay a last good night.
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Date: 2003-10-13 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2003-10-13 06:38 pm (UTC)I just sat down and realized, hey, it's been a whole year that she's gone.
It doesn't seem that way, you know? I still have that feeling that she's still there, way out in Cavite, wandering up and down the palengke (market), buying a couple of fruits for my young cousins. And that we can still hop on over every now and then, my brother ready with a joke or two to make her laugh.