March 31, 2006 – The Measure of a Life

March 31, 2006 – The Measure of a Life

My mother had once told me that she was going to write the story of her life and shock a few people in the process. I don’t know if she ever got around to actually putting her life on paper but I had begun recording her recollections on tape and transcribing them. The great disappointment in this exercise is that I can’t capture what my mother is saying. I’m putting her word on paper but not distilling her meaning. My mother is a complex woman who learned early in her life to communicate at many different levels. And I never mastered the art of understanding the meanings contained in her layered expressions and body language. I can attempt to interpret them but much if not all of her meaning will get lost in translation.

Trinidad Dionicia McLeod, nee Quindara, left her uncle’s home, where she had been raised alongside her cousin Juliana to make her way in the world. She had received the best education available to a young girl in turn-of-the century Manila, Philippines—the islands, then an American possession, with a citizenry now adopting English as the second language throughout the Islands. English was becoming the national language since the Philippines had and still has an abundance of dialects throughout the islands’ many provinces. When Mom graduated high school she spoke Tagalog, the dialect of Manila and the surrounding region, Ilocano, the dialect of Agoo La Union, where her father’s family lived and where she was born, and English. “We were all taught English from the first grade,” Mom recalled.

In the mid-1930s as Mom neared maturity Manuel Quezon had become President of the Philippine Commonwealth, which had been newly created in 1935. For the early part of the century, the islands had been a U.S. possession acquired for $20 million in Paris on December 10, 1898 in a settlement with Spain over the Spanish-American War. Mom’s generation was the first raised under American rule. Her parents had live through the transition from a Spanish-speaking nation to an English-speaking one. She went to work right after her uncle died. I asked her what caused his death and she replied that he was a very handsome man who had been a policeman in his earlier life and had made enemies, both men, whom he had jailed, and women, whose hearts he had stolen. The speculation is that one of his spurned lovers had put a curse of him and he had died as a result. With Mom, what she says can have a myriad of meanings. I couldn’t tell if she was kidding. In her early childhood she had lost her mother and now her uncle—the only father she had known. Her mother had been the last of her line. Looking back through the lens of time, all the sorrows of those times lack the force to stir emotion these many years later. Time buries all unhappiness.

At the tender age of 22 she was out working to help support herself and her family. It was 1935 and the world was digging itself out from the Great Depression. The Japanese were building prosperity by preparing for war, something that seemed distant and unfathomable to Manila’s men and women in the street. Mom’s first job out of school was at a Chinese-owned printing company. Mom said the Chinese in the Philippines were the business owners. She applied for and got a job as a typesetter. “He hired me because I was a good speller,” she said. After mom had proofed the typeset copy, the owner would also read it over. “Most of what was printed was in English,” Mom declares, but it’s hard to say for sure—a detail clouded by years in the U.S. She worked at the print shop for three years. During that time, she met her first husband Ricardo Clemente, who also worked there. They were married and enjoyed the handful of halcyon years before the outbreak of the Second World War. General Douglas MacArthur had arrived in the Philippines in 1937 as head of the U.S. military mission helping the islands prepare for full independence in 1946. The year 1937 was also the year SV was born, Mom’s only child with her first husband.

The idyllic life of Roberto and Trinidad Clemente was thrown into chaos with the outbreak of war in the Pacific. As a U.S. possession, The Philippines became a prime target after the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. A short two weeks later, on December, 22 1941. Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma led two divisions of Japan’s 14th Army onto the beaches of Lingayen Gulf, 120 miles north of Manila on the west coast of Luzon. Mom’s first husband died just after the war began, as the Japanese were invading. He came down with pneumonia, was ill for three days and then he expired. General Homma was the man responsible for the bombing of Manila after it had been declared an open city—the equivalent of raising a white flag. “They were blowing Manila to pieces,” Mom recalled. Homma was also responsible for the infamous Bataan Death March. Of over 70,000 American and Filipino soldiers who surrendered, over 10,000 perished. Mom’s family was touched by the atrocities. “The Japanese took my husband’s brother who was a doctor and we never saw him again,” she remembers.

“I was working to support my husband’s family as well as SV and me,” she recalled. Somehow, Mom never explained how, she managed to come into possession of a truck that she used to earn a living. “We had a business. We would take used clothes from Manila to the country, to Agoo, to sell for farm produce. We would return to Manila and sell the produce for money and more clothes.” With the bombing of Manila Mom, SV, and her in-laws had left Manila and found refuge in the province of her birth, Agoo La Union. The government was moving everyone into evacuation centers and that’s where SV, my in-laws, and I were staying. My mother-in-law was taking care of SV, while I worked. There was another little girl Cora, Corazon was her name. She was so tiny. She was only two years old. Her mother died when we were in the evacuation center. We loved her and took her everywhere we went. Those were the hardest days in my life.”

In that conversation Mom and I had nearly 10 months ago, I had found the traits that defined my mother’s character. The most extreme circumstance had tested her will and it was not found wanting. She managed to provide for herself and for those she had taken responsibility for and would continue to do so throughout the war and afterwards. I would make sure this got into her obituary.

March 29, 2006 – Signing a Life Away

March 29, 2006 – Signing a Life Away

It’s just past noon on Tuesday January 31th, 2006. I’m upstairs sitting on a sofa in the foyer at the top of the stair writing away on my Dell Latitude laptop PC. I’ve made some progress on my mother’s obituary. Her rosary service is in two days and the funeral is this Friday. We want the first notice to run in the “El Paso Times” on Wednesday—copy due date is today before close of business. The larger one we want to run on Thursday morning before the rosary service in the afternoon. How do you condense a lifetime into a 50-word obituary or for that matter into 500-word one? In the case of the latter, you find what you think are the defining moments in a person’s life and tie them together. In the case of the former you state the simple fact and alert those who knew her where they can come to bid her farewell.

“Trinidad Q. McLeod died peacefully in her sleep on January 29, 2006 at William Beaumont Hospital. Rosary services will be held Thursday February 2, at Martin Funeral Home, 3839 Montana Avenue. Funeral services will be held Friday February 3, at Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Church at 4800 Byron Street.”

Today was also the due date for the copy that would run on the DVD to introduce the 20 photographs—also due today—that would be made into a self running slide show set to music. We also needed the concluding text to follow the photos. On our return trip this morning from Burlington Coat Factory where we had been shopping for appropriate clothes to wear to the rosary and funeral services, we had all decided to conclude the slide show with a phrase in Tagalog—the national language of the Philippines—that said “we love you.” My niece CB had been trying to call PG, a close friend of Mom, who was also the leader of the local Filipino community to have her alert the community of Mom’s passing. She tried again to reach her to ask for the Tagalog phrase but again to no avail. She decided to call NT, the widow of Mom’s brother George. NT had come to the U.S. following her two daughters, both of whom had arrived in the early 1990s to work as nurses. NT is eccentric, free spirited and inclined to be flighty but she has a good heart. NT provided the phrase in Tagalog, carefully spelling each word of the three-word phrase. We now had all our materials to provide the funeral home during our meeting this afternoon.

At about 2:00 PM, all six of us loaded into Dad’s white Chevy Uplander for the drive to the funeral home. When we arrived our representative, RM led us into the conference room where we had last met and we all sat down to go over the “Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected/Purchase Agreement.” Sitting at the conference room table I was suddenly struck by how much this resembled the purchase of an automobile or other such big ticket item. The statement RM presented was a four-page legal size document, with two pages of itemized services and associated dollar amounts requiring a signature at the bottom of page two. The remaining two pages of the document were “Terms and Conditions’ with legal expressions in uppercase bold type. Two paragraphs jumped off the page because both were all written in bold uppercase letters. The first began “WARRANTIES WE DISCLAIM:” and the second began “ARBITRATION”: the word not only in bold type but underlined. There were two more paragraphs of uppercase bold type of the fourth page as well.

Having never been involved in the business side of a funeral before, I found all this intriguing. What does a funeral home get paid to do? And there on the statement was an itemized list of everything they provided. In Section I, “Services and Merchandise Funeral Director and Staff Services” was a charge for $1750.00 for Basic Professional Service Fee. I immediately thought it was the part dealing with preparing the body for burial. But, no, that came under “Care and Preparation of Remains” which was billed out at $650.00, plus an additional charge of $300.00 that went for “Dressing and Casketing of Deceased.” The casket came under the heading “Merchandise” and consisted of the “Star Copper” casket Mom had selected. It was made by Batesville Casket Company of Batesville, Indiana, a subsidiary of Hillenbrand Industries and the leading manufacturer of metal and hardwood burial caskets according to their website. The Star Copper was made of 20-gauge steel painted in a coppertone exterior with a beige crepe interior. It cost $1495.00 and would have cost more at today’s prices had Mom not purchased it when she did several years ago.

The other items on the statement were the type of charges you’d expect with any event, wedding, baptism, family get together, etc. The first was “Use of Facilities and Related Services”—the funeral home’s chapel. Itemized costs were broken into two parts: a $300 charge for “Visitation”—guests coming to pay their respects during the rosary on Thursday—and a $500 charge for a “Funeral Ceremony” which was the charge for the rosary service itself including an additional $150 for a priest to lead the rosary service. The funeral home provided the room from 3:00 to 4:00 PM for private visitation—family members and relatives. The rosary service ran from 6:00 to 7:00 PM, with the public visitation for friends of Mom to visit running from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. We would also use the room on Friday morning as family and close friends gathered before the funeral. The last major item on the statement “Transportation” consisted of four charges. The first was a $320 charge for “Transferring Remains to Funeral Home,” Mom’s trip from William Beaumont to Martin. The second was a $315 charge for “Funeral Vehicle/Hearse,” Mom’s ride from Martin to Lady of Assumption and from there to Ft. Bliss National Cemetery. The third was a $330 charge for “Family Vehicle/Limousine 2@ $165 each. And the fourth was a charge of “Flower Vehicle 1@ $115.” There was a separate $350 charge for “flowers” and police escort charge of $270. And there was an estimated charge of $300 for the larger obituary that we were producing to run in the “El Paso Times.”

For most of the explanation of charges we all kept a business like demeanor but after all of the details had been explained and agreed to, the actual signature my father signed to the document made him break down once again. It carried each of us to our own state of grief, some more demonstrative than others. The signature made the arrangement final. Until then Mom was still somewhere between life and her final resting place, suspended in time until some machine was set in motion to move her along her way. That signature had started the machine rolling.

Our representative RM offered some consoling words with the tissues that he handed out and excused himself while he made copies for our files. We were left alone with our collective grief and some sense of guilt at having moved Mom further on her journey away from us. The reality was that we were holding onto the mortal shell of what our mother was. Her spirit had long ago soared into the world beyond ours’, perhaps stopping to look in on all those she was leaving behind, some like my grand daughter AT actually aware of her visit. She surely visited the rest of us to take one last look before departing but none of us could see beyond our grief to enjoy that fleeting moment.

We gathered our copy of the “Statement…” and made one other choice RM requested us to make, which among the prayer cards we wished to select. These would be provided to each of the mourners attending Mom’s rosary. EV asked her daughter CB what she thought Mom would like and CB immediately chose one adorned with a winged angel, halo around her red shoulder length hair standing framed before a roman arch. At her bare feet, two white doves are taking wing at the right of the picture, while another sits quietly in front and to the right of the angel. She’s wearing a long sleeved, ankle length white flowing sheath dress, the cloth bunched at the circular opening around her neck, a white cloth belt tied in a large bow gathers the gown below her breast. Draped over her palms-up, outstretched arms is a pinkish red silk-like shawl. The angel’s face bears a look of contemplation, her eyes staring toward the doves in flight. Mom loved angels and she would have been pleased with CB’s choice. The back side of the card bore the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd…” and RM said Martin would add the phrase “In Loving Memory of Trinidad Q. McLeod with the dates of her life below. Inset beside the words would be a picture of our choice.

He then asked if we had brought the pictures for the DVD. We had, EV replied and proffered them to him. Was there one in this set that we might want to use for the card? My sisters all agreed on a recent photo of Mom. She’s wearing a blue dress. Her short hair has been coiffed and her face is turned slightly to the right though her eyes are looking straight at the camera and she has the slightest hint of a smile. It is an ageless look that adorns her face. You can see the spirit of a young woman peering across the ages. It is a proud expression of a self-contented woman. She is holding on her lap a pure white cat, whose name I’ve forgotten, that had the most unusual green eyes. The cat has turned its face and is also looking at the camera. Mom loved cats and they adored her, dogs, birds, and fish too. If Mom were here, this would have been the photo she'd choose. Perhaps she was. Our choice made, emotionally drained we leave the funeral home and return home. Another day closer to the last goodbye.

March 26, 2006 – A Morning at the Burlington Coat Factory

March 26, 2006 – A Morning at the Burlington Coat Factory

It’s mid morning on Tuesday January 31th, 2006. My sisters, niece, and Dad are all sitting around the breakfast table in Dad’s place, the second day after Mom passed away in the intensive care ward of William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas—a fatal embolism after her vital signs had returned to normal and her prospects for recovery had improved. Dad has just gotten over a flood of tears. The breakfast table is the trigger that floods us all with memories of Mom. No place in the house is she more missed than in this room and at this table, where she would serve meals she had prepared and then insist that each one of us eat beyond the point of having satisfied our appetite. It was a reflex she harbored from days during the Second World War in the Philippines, when finding the next meal became everyone's preoccupation. I’m speculating since she never said as much.

Mixed with the message of eating to excess, she would chide us if she thought we were putting on weight. All three of my sisters and my niece are skinny in spite of Mom’s obsession with having us eat. Dad too is relatively slim for a big-frame fellow just over five feet ten inches tall though in recent years he’s begun to build a paunch that a belt fit for a 34-inch waist would just contain. He’s been housebound by leg injuries that have plagued him for couple of years; housebound too fearing to leave Mom by herself too long. If you look at pictures taken of Mom and Dad side by side over the past sixty years, you begin to see them resembling one another more and more over time. Sixty years of being together turns two people into Siamese twins bonded emotionally as strongly as if by skin and bone.

Being away from home for the better part of forty years, the emotional tie holding me to my family had loosened far more than the bond that tied my sister EV and LC—the two middle children of the family—and my niece CB to both my parents. My sister DD the youngest sibling and I were the two that left home and found lives outside of El Paso. When I would come home, usually at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and/or the occasional summer vacation, I would notice the ritual of the extended household of Mom and Dad, EV, LC, CB and in more recent years EA—the family housekeeper who has cared for my parents for over a decade if not longer. The weekend ritual would begin with the household awakening to breakfast smells wafting up the stairs— predominantly that of frying bacon and coffee. I would have returned from my run. If our two daughters ME and RB—in recent years each would have husbands and kids—were with my wife IM and me, the upstairs would be chaos coming from the two upstairs bathrooms and four bedrooms. Downstairs EA would be cooking or on some weekends my sister LC would come over and she would be chef. About the time everyone was finished upstairs, they would descend on the dining room where they would be joined by EV and CB and we’d have a raucous meal with jokes flying back and forth.

It was that same way this morning only without Mom. Sitting around the table were Mom’s four children, her husband and one grand daughter and we all felt the lack of Mom’s presence. I could easily understand how my father would suddenly tear up. The conversation around the table this morning was lighter than at the same time yesterday. CB was describing Mahjong games she played with Mom and her friends, HM and PG, and the banter that would go on among all of them. We spoke about the pictures that we were sending over to the funeral home for the video they would be preparing. There’s a head and shoulder’s photo of Mom as a young woman in a print dress, her black, shoulder-length hair in the 1940s style. The photographer is at her right and her gaze is fixed along her right shoulder seemingly unaware of his presence. Another picture also taken in the late 1940s shows the young Mom and Dad sitting side by side on a picnic blanket. Mom has a Mona Lisa smile and Dad a slight grin. Dad recalls the memories associated with each of these two pictures: the first of Mom just arrived in the U.S. and the second he and Mom on a picnic at an Army base in North Carolina. Another photo taken in the late 1950s shows Mom in a black sheath dress, her hair cut short, a serious look on her face. She is looking straight at the camera. This was a picture taken of Mom right after she became an American citizen—her dream had finally been fulfilled. She was a card carrying member of the promised land.

As we talk, our housekeeper, EA moves among us refilling empty coffee cups and removing dishes and silverware no longer being used. We would offer to help but she would refuse, insisting we not bother. EV interrupts the reverie engendered by the photos of Mom we’re going to deliver to the Martin Funeral Home this afternoon, by asking Dad if he had a dark suit to wear to the funeral. He hadn’t, of course. Dad’s formal attire consisted of an assortment of western boots, light brown and beige dress pants, western shirts with bolo tie, and western style suit jackets. None were appropriate for the somber event we were attending on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. It was decided that right after breakfast we would all go to Burlington Coat Factory to find Dad a suit. I was reminded that I had to complete Mom’s obituaries, a brief notice that the El Paso Times publishes without charge for the public record and a longer one that we can run with a photograph of Mom for an additional charge. We have a credit of a couple of hundred dollars that Martin Funeral Home says we can use to pay for the larger notice.

There are two Burlington Coat Factory locations in El Paso. One is at 1144 N Yarbrough Drive and the other at 6020 N Mesa Street. We opt for the Yarbrough Drive location. We climb into Dad’s new white Chevy Uplander—it has less than 2000 miles on the odometer—EV driving, Dad riding shot gun, CB and I in the middle two bucket seats and DD and LC on the bench seat in the back. EV takes Dyer Street south to Monroe Avenue and turns left for a block before merging onto the southbound service road of Highway 54—Gateway Boulevard North. She accelerates off the service road and onto the highway a couple of exits before 54 T’s into Interstate 10, the east-west freeway that runs from the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) in Santa Monica in the west to its terminus at Interstate 95 in Jacksonville, Florida in the east just before 95 heads over the Fuller Warren Bridge for its southward run to Miami. EV takes the McRae Boulevard exit from the freeway and runs along the service road parallel to I-10 until the Yarbrough Drive intersection. Left for a block to another large intersection and right into the Burlington Coat Factory parking lot in front of a discount department store that is easily three-quarters of a block long and close to a half a block deep—store front to rear.

We enter en masse and everyone goes in their own direction, EV and CB taking Dad over to the men’s clothing store. DD and LC are off shopping together and I’m walking about the casual clothing section of the men’s department looking for T-shirts. I had brought enough underwear and socks for a week but had forgotten to pack enough shirts. I found two that I liked then went over to see how Dad was coming. The store had an incredible selection of men’s suits and sports coats and I soon found myself looking at something that might fit me. To my surprise a number of suits, many on sale, caught my fancy and I began trying them on. I found one that fit perfectly and was at a great price. I called IM and told her to forget about bringing any clothes for me as I had found a complete outfit, alterations on the pants cuffs to be completed on Wednesday. Two white shirts, also on sale, two pairs of socks, and a black tie completed the ensemble. My father was not having as much success. EV and CB couldn’t find a suit that had the right pants size to fit him. They opted for a dark sports coat with a slightly lighter pair of dress trousers that provided a good fit. Unknowingly we had spent over an hour in the huge retail outlet and it was close to noon by the time we checked out and headed back home.

We as a culture—perhaps because of mass communications drumming an imperative to shop into all of us—have come to find consolation in making purchases. We shop when we’re happy and euphoric as well as when we’re sad and depressed. All of that pop culture marketing suggesting that our highs can be enhanced and our lows can be raised with a purchase has permeated our psyche; though, my purchase had not had the promised affect on me. Funerals are a ritual with a series of tasks that must be completed to bring closure to a person’s life. It’s intended as consolation for the living and a tribute to the deceased. And after our first meeting with Martin Funeral Home, we had a clear idea of what each of the tasks we had to complete were to achieve the desired end. We had the proper attire for the rosary and funeral service.

EV and CB were continuing to ensure we had notified all those close to my parents of Mom’s passing. They had contacted Mom niece, AN, the daughter of Mom’s older brother Marion, in a suburb of Los Angeles. She plans to attend the services and her nephew wants to accompany his aunt on the plane flight out. He needs a letter from Dad so that his employer will grant him the time off work. Dad signed the letter that EV drafted and she faxed it to the employer. We now begin to plan for housing all the incoming guests. EV is insisting that our sister SY, from Mom’s first marriage, and her husband BB stay with us though they want to stay at a hotel at the airport. After much back and forth, SY and BB agree. With AN and her nephew coming we’ll need two more rooms. DD suggests the solution that works. She and my daughter ME will stay in my parents’ 1950s vintage Airstream trailer parked in the driveway. It’s taken my parents all over the U.S. as well to Alaska and back, but that’s another story. With all the guests invited, we return to our task of getting the obituary written and finalizing the photos to deliver to Martin Funeral Home this afternoon.

March 19, 2006 – Dinner and a Trip to Costco

March 19, 2006 - Dinner and a Trip to Costco

It's the late afternoon of Monday January 30th, 2006. We've just come out of Martin Funeral Home on Montana Street in El Paso, Texas, where we had been discussing with the Funeral Home Staff the services for our Mom, recently deceased. We in this case are my three sisters EV, LC, and DD-in order of age oldest first; my young niece, CB, EV's daughter, and our Dad. It was an exhausting session having to consider all the preparations for the rosary being held this coming Thursday afternoon from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM or when the last mourner took their leave and the funeral mass being held Friday morning at 10:00 AM followed by a gravesite service sometime after 11:00 when the funeral procession arrived.

We return home to consider the tasks we've been given: drafting an obituary to run in the “El Paso Times” Thursday morning, finding about 20 photos that would span and provide some meaningful moments in her long life. When we arrived back at our parents place on Pierce Avenue, my sisters and niece set to the task of finding photos they could all agree upon. There were many, a Christmas in the late 1950s with Mom sitting beside the Christmas three, her left arm extended to the floor, her legs curled underneath her right side, her colorful dark skirt fanned out in a circle around her and a perfect smile on her face. I'm sad because I can't for the life of me remember Christmas that year or where we were.

I set about gathering the pieces of a story to write about my mother's life. I start with her childhood, which she only recently described to me during a visit in the late spring of last year. I had heard bits of the story before but I sat and asked her for details in this most recent discussion. Tell me about your early childhood I say to her, back then. “I was born fin Agoo La Union in the Philippines,” she replies. According to Wikipedia, Agoo is a “municipality in the province of La Union, Philippines. According to the 2000 census, it had a population of 51,923 people in 9,945 households. La Union is a province of the Philippines located in the Ilocos Region in Luzon, on the west side of the island of Luzon, due north and slightly west of Manila. Its capital is San Fernando City. It borders Ilocos Sur to the north, Benguet to the east, and Pangasinan to the south. To the west of La Union is the South China Sea. Ninety three percent of the population is Ilocano and speak this dialect. Tagalog is the predominant language of the Islands." Mom spoke both dialects as well as English fluently.

Curiously, she did not grow up in Agoo, but rather in the cosmopolitan capital of Manila. Mom's father, Luciano Quindara, was a policeman in Agoo, a powerful position back then. He was one of four siblings, two older sisters and one younger brother. He was married and already had a son, Mom's older brother Marion. Mom came next and when she was about five years old, her younger sister Margarita was born. A short month thereafter Mom's mother-the only child in her family-died unexpectedly. Mom's uncle, Domingo Quindara-Luciano's younger brother, had also been a policeman in Agoo, but had become an embalmer at the Quigue Funeral Home. He was living with his wife, Louisa, and their only child Juliana in a large apartment above the funeral Home at the corner of Avenida Rizal and Avenida Santa Cruz in Manila. On one of his visits to Agoo, Mom asked her uncle if she could come live with him. Determining that Mom's request was serious, Domingo asked his brother Luciano if he could take Mom to be a companion for his young daughter, Juliana who was seven-Mom was eight by then. Possibly sensing Mom's Iron-willed determination in his eight-year old daughter, Luciano agreed to Domingo's request and Mom left her father's home in Agoo to live with her uncle in Manila.

In Manila, Mom lived the life of relative affluence in turn of the century Manila. " I had a good living Juliana and I each had our own bedrooms,” Mom said. Her uncle provided the same education that he afforded his daughter. The two girls attended a school on Avenida Rizal a few blocks from the funeral home. "We wore a uniform, a blue skirt and a white blouse, black shoes and white socks,” Mom recalled. “I carried my books in a bag around my shoulder. Before the beginning of the school year, Uncle Domingo would have Sylvia, a seamstress make twelve uniforms for my cousin and twelve for me. We would have the uniforms for six months. After six months, Uncle Domingo would have new uniforms made for us. Aunt Louisa's sister helped with the housework and Uncle Domingo hired a young man to do the laundry. He was a great guy, my uncle, very handsome and charming.”

That was the extent of what I learned of my mother's early childhood. When I had this conversation with my mother in April of last year, I went looking on the web for pictures of Manila in the early 1900s and I found a few. One is a picture of Escotto Street if the handwritten legend at the bottom right of the photo is accurate. In the photo, it's a crowded street with 1920s vintage automobiles parked on either side of the narrow two way street, a single line of traffic trying to make its way along the street with pedestrians jaywalking among the slow moving traffic. The sidewalks are teeming with people, women in ankle length print dresses and men in white pants and jackets. Clearly visible in the photograph is the name of the “American Electric Company” and “Antonio Pena Dentist” above the first floor of a two-story building, where Escotto Street doubles in width-the two-story building curving where the street widens. Electric power lines are strung along the street opposite the electric company offices. The image in the black and white photo is aged with time adding to the historical look of the street scene. When my mother was young this street would have seemed new and fresh, the cars the symbol of the latest offerings from car manufacturers, the fashions, what everyone was wearing that year.

I wrote a paragraph of the obit describing my mother's childhood and further noted that her father Luciano remarried and had seven more children: Senon, Sabas, Cesar, Anthony, George, SQ, and Mary. Of these siblings she is survived by only one her half-brother SQ, whom she never met while they lived in the Philippines. SQ and Mom corresponded in their adult lives. Eventually, it was my mother who helped SQ enter the U.S. and acquire his citizenship. I had pretty much written as much as I was going to get into the computer today and was easily distracted when my sisters announced the arrival of DD's friend PT. After sitting around the dining table talking for a bit, everyone realized we hadn't eaten since breakfast and suggested a drive out to the Great American Land & Cattle Restaurant at 9800 Gateway Boulevard. It's about six miles north on Highway 54-the north-south freeway that is Gateway Boulevard. EV took Dyer Street, the local road that runs adjacent but at a slight angle to the Freeway and had to turn left at Diana Drive and return to the freeway to get to the restaurant. It was before 5:00 PM when we-EV, DD, PT, my dad, CB and I arrived-LC had decided to call it a day and said she see us on Tuesday morning.

The restaurant is your typical meat and potatoes western theme restaurant: Polished wood booths along the wall with bench seats, wooden tables and chairs in the center of the room, and a wooden floor that amplifies the myriad spoken conversations mixed with the clatter of dishes and silverware. Except for EV, CB and my dad, it was margaritas for DD and PT and red wine for me. Having PT allowed us all to talk about what was going on in her life. She has her own business taking care of elderly patients that want to live at home and can afford to do so. She's their concierge getting them everything from medical appliances and services to ordering them new beds and getting them gardening and handyman help. She has a wealth of stories about interesting characters among her clients and shared a few over drinks. Up until his death in 2001, she had helped author and artist Tom Lea, his renown restored when George W. Bush had Lea's painting “Rio Grande” hung in the White House Oval Office. I knew Tom Lea from reading his novel “The Brave Bulls” in my teens.

Dinner came and after we had our fill, we drove over to SQ's house to see if he was still living in El Paso. DD and PT decide to stay in the Uplander and Dad, CM, EV and I walk up to the front door. It's dusk and the night is engulfing the little remaining sunlight. A knock on the door from my dad followed by a second is eventually answered by the puzzled face of SQ who is surprised to see four visitors on his doorstep on an early Monday evening. He is alone in the house; his wife ML is visiting their children and grandchildren in Houston. He invites us in and EV and Dad begin explaining that we had tried calling his number but it was disconnected with no forwarding number provided. He explained that after being harassed by telemarketers he finally changed the number and had the new one unlisted. We finally get around to the reason for our visit and finding no easy segue, my father comes right out and says, SQ your sister died over the weekend and we wanted to let you know, after which he begins to sob. SQ is shocked and says nothing for a long moment. Eventually he does say that he is saddened by the news and wants to do what he can for the funeral services. We tell him the dates for the rosary and funeral services and ask if he would want to be a pallbearer. He says he would like that very much.

The conversation shifts to a retelling of Mom's last few days, the brief hospital stay, the apparent turn for the best, and the abrupt reversal of fortune. The conversation concludes and we take our leave, with SQ walking us to the car and speaking briefly with DD and PT. We load up, take our leave and begin to head for home. EV asks if we need to go anywhere else. DD and I both say we need to stop by Costco-there is no more wine at the house. EV gets back on Gateway Blvd heading south until it exits onto Interstate 10 which becomes Gateway Blvd East and West. She takes the Eastbound exit onto I-10 to the Trowbridge Drive exit the second after getting on the freeway. Costco is in the Bassett Shopping center on the north side of Interstate 10 which means we have to go under the freeway into the shopping center parking lot from the freeway access road heading west. It's 6:45 in the evening and DD and I go into the liquor store which is in a separate building beside the Costco warehouse. We find a few bottles of California reds and a couple of bottles of sparkling wine and head for the checkout, where I present my Costco card only to be told it's not needed since Texas law prohibits exclusive alcohol sales to club members. I pay for the purchase and we return to the van and head home.

PT has a business to run and she takes her leave after we return home. The rest of us return to the dinner table and settle in for an evening of more conversations about our list of to do's for the funeral services. We go over the pictures selected for the DVD and discuss what needs to go into obit. We also realize that Dad and I both need dark suits for the services. The first item on the agenda for Tuesday becomes a trip to Burlington Coat Factory. The evening ends with Dad deciding to turn in at around 9:00 and EV and CM bailing at around 9:30 leaving DD and me to sit and chat over glasses of the red wine we had purchased at Costco. She describes her rush to the Logan Airport before the sun had risen on roadways slick with ice. She's in the fast lane following another car at a distance and sees him brake and she comes off the gas and taps her brakes having given herself ample stopping distance from the car ahead. However, she had not reckoned on the ice patches she traverse as she approaches the slowing car ahead of her also moving forward over the slicked roadway. They collide at slow speed and her car is damaged sufficiently that she has to move it over to the side of the road. The highway patrol drives by, sees no one is injured and tells the two of them to leave their cars and contact the city towing lot to claim them later. The other driver's car can be driven and he offers to drive her to the airport. She barely makes her flight and after recounting her adventure realizes how tired she is-it's past midnight on her clock, having left Boston early this morning.

Another day has passed since Mom has passed away and life continues her passing notwithstanding. I too realize I'm tired and call it a night.

March 14, 2006 – First Visit to The Funeral Home

March 14, 2006 – First Visit to The Funeral Home

It’s the afternoon of Monday January 30th, 2006 just after our youngest sister, DD has arrived from Boston in preparation for the funeral and burial of our mother at Ft Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso, Texas. DD is the bubbly one of the family, seemingly full of energy—the sort of person, who never seems to have a bad day, though I know she has. An eternal optimist she left home to find herself, spending time in Michigan, California and finally settling in Boston. Like the next older in the family, LC, DD’s a nurse. LC is in cardiac rehab, while DD was in OB-GYN, but has since become heavily involved in alternative medicine, practicing with a Russian immigrant in the Boston Area, a fully accredited MD, who offers alternative holistic remedies.

Once she’s settled and we’ve gone over the details of Mom’s last day at William Beaumont General Hospital, we pile into Dad’s Chevy Uplander and head for Martin Funeral Home to schedule the rosary, funeral mass, and burial. The Uplander is just large enough to accommodate all six of us, my oldest sister EV driving and my Dad riding shotgun, my niece and I in the two middle bucket seats and my younger sisters LC and DD in the bench seat at the back. The six of us would be spending a lot of time driving around in Dad’s Uplander in these same seats throughout the week. Outside, it’s a typical winter’s day in El Paso: temperature in the low 70s, a light breeze blowing, not a cloud in the sky, and the sun lighting the surroundings with a brilliant luminescence—the light always seemed more intense in El Paso than other places I’ve lived, made even brighter by the absents of vegetation to absorb the rays reflected from rock and bleached soil of the desert landscape.

Martin Funeral Home is at 3839 Montana Avenue three miles away. From our place, we take Dyer Street until it turns into Pershing Drive. This stretch of Dyer is as familiar to me now at age 60 as it was when I was in my early teens—most of the same buildings are still standing—the businesses that occupied them have changed over time though a handful have remained until now: convenience stores, garages, gas stations, furniture stores, pawn shops (hardly noticeably in other cities plentiful in El Paso), and bars. The houses on the street look their age—years of hard living and a minimum of investment in maintaining their outward appearance. They resemble the people that inhabit them. From Pershing we make a left onto Trowbridge Drive for a long block then turn right onto Lamar Street for five blocks to Montana. A right turn brings us to the funeral home, a sand colored single story brick building, nearly a third of a block along. We park on the western side of the building and enter en masse.

Funeral homes are not pleasant places, because of what they represent: portals to the underworld. Martin was no different: workers dressed in conservative attire all speaking in somber sympathetic tones. But, it’s a business and we’re ushered into a meeting room with dark wood executive table and six matching chairs. The funeral home representative, RM, is a pleasant Hispanic male, about five-ten in height with a muscular frame carrying a few pounds extra around the middle, while shirt and tie, dark blue dress pants. He brings in a couple of extra chairs one for himself and another representative an attractive Hispanic female in a dark beige suit. RM begins by reciting the components in the package that my Mother has purchased a few years back with her best friend HM:

1. Preparation for internment. Did we bring the clothes that she requested to be buried in? “No” my oldest sister EV said we would bring it by tomorrow. Did we have any jewelry that we wanted them to dress mom in? “Yes, some earrings my mother favored along with a rosary we wanted to have placed in her hands,” all to be dropped off on Tuesday. This was the most personal exchange of the meeting because it involved the most intimate details of the funeral. A round of tears from my dad attends this exchange—tissues in good supply about the room are offered to him. My oldest sister is the next one to accept an offered tissue.
2. Use of one of the chapels at Martin to hold a rosary. Martin has two chapels, one slightly larger than the other but each able to handle 200 people. We anticipated no more than 50. It was a workday and friends would choose to attend the church service rather than the afternoon rosary. The earliest either chapel could accommodate us was Thursday afternoon with the funeral service itself the following Friday morning. We agree and RM then asked if we would like Martin to supply a chaplain or if we would like to have one of our choosing. In retrospect, we should have opted for one of the many priests, who knew my parents for the service, someone who knew Mom to preside rather than someone who had no knowledge of her. But we selected their alternative. His services would be an additional expense.
3. Hearse to carry mom in her casket to church for funeral service—where did we plan to hold the services? “Our Lady of Assumption at Byron Street and Truman Avenue,” we reply. Have you arranged with the church to hold services there and have you gotten a priest to say mass? We had done neither and suddenly collectively agreed Father Ben should say mass. Father Ben is a family friend who Baptized my daughter RD and married her. He is also the brother of LG, another family friend whose husband passed away some years back. The two were quite a couple in the Filipino community. At every event they would take the dance floor and treat the crowd to some classic dance moves. LG, now in the care of her daughter MG walks with the help of a walker.
4. Casket, a copper colored model—it had a model name but I took no note of it. RM had a picture of the model but it wasn’t in the color Mom had chosen and EV wanted to see the actual color, RM excused himself to locate the brochure with the casket in the appropriate color. He asked if we might want to upgrade to the next model up, an additional cost but with some features we might find worthwhile. RM recites them and EV turns him down with no disagreement from the rest of us.
5. Plastic encasement to surround the casket—Ft. Bliss Cemetery supplies this with every plot and we’ll be getting a credit since we won’t be requiring it.
6. Also included in the package were two limousines one to carry pallbearers and a second to carry members of the immediate family. However, there would be a need for a police escort to allow the funeral procession to travel from funeral home to church without having to stop at traffic lights and from the church to the cemetery—fascinating that when you’re dead, you’re given the right to speed along your way from place to place. We would have to pay the two off duty motorcycle policemen for their time at an hourly rate and he gave us the amount though I don’t recall what it was.
7. The funeral home would also place a notice in the “El Paso Times”, the Gannett-owned local morning paper—the only daily in the city. (As a kid I was a paper carrier for the Times delivering papers up and down Truman, Lincoln, Johnson, and Hayes Avenues between Dyer Street and Byron Street.) We could also write a larger obituary for a fee and Martin Funeral Home would place it for you in the “Times.” We opted for the larger piece that had to be written by Wednesday to make the paper on Thursday.
8. Also included in the package was the production of a slideshow on DVD that Martin would produce from photographs and text copy we would provide. The slideshow would play on monitors inside the chapel during the rosary service. The slideshow would transition from one photo to another accompanied by music supplied by the funeral home—we could supply music of our choosing as well. We opt for theirs.

It cost just under $3000 back then and it would be over $5000 now. He suggest that my father might want to consider the package for himself as a hedge against the inflation that will surely drive the cost up even more over time. Getting no response, he summarized the items that we have to get to the funeral home and the times we need to have them by and we’re done. It was just over an hour and a half. I realized that grief comes at a financial price, just as does the happiness that accompanies a wedding or baptism. We were planning an event—a somber one no doubt, but an event nonetheless. There was a ceremony to be performed. We were its host and we had just worked out the details to make it come off. We had work to do and left RM and his associate to get it done.

March 12, 2006 - The Morning After A Death in the Family

March 12, 2006 - The Morning After A Death in the Family

It's Monday January 30th, 2006 the day after my mother died peacefully in her sleep at William Beaumont General Hospital in Morningside Heights a suburb of El Paso. I wake from a fretful night of drifting in and out of a sleep without dreams that I can remember. I kept thinking my mother's spirit would come in the nigh and say goodbye. She didn't and for good reason. Her time on this earth had passed and she was on her way to where ever we all go after death. Lingering to dwell on the living is a concept of those left behind-you did not linger as you left her to join the Navy nearly forty years ago. Everyone moves through life and beyond at their own bidding not that of others.

Last night after returning to my Dad's home, I had called my wife IM and two daughters ME and RD and told them of Mom's death. IM and ME decide to fly out on Wednesday morning. RD had just taken a new job and couldn't get the time off. She was feeling terribly guilty but we consoled her saying that Mom would understand. My mom had seen all of her great grandchildren except RD's youngest son, TF. RD's oldest daughter AF had woken late Sunday, the night Mom died, and had called for her mother. When RD entered AF's bedroom and asked what was wrong, AF said a lady had come into her room and had smiled at her and left. I suspect it was my mom visiting her great grandkids before going on. Perhaps, she had lingered just long enough to say goodbye to them.

I pull myself out of bed, don my Rhode & Swartz running outfit-a giveaway from the company of the same name acquired over a decade ago, now a comfort when I run in the cold. Outside my dad's place on Pierce Avenue, the temperature is in the high 40s lower 50s. The high desert gets cold at night. The intersection of Dyer Street and Pierce Avenue is at 3,935 feet above sea level. Where my wife IM and I live in San Jose, it's 171 feet above sea level. Outside, the sun has risen on a new day illuminating the sun-baked landscape of this intersection between Mexico and the United States. The predominant color of El Paso is a gray tinted slightly brown. The color peeks out around the rectangles of color creating a mosaic that produces a picture of the El Paso-Juarez, Mexico metropolitan area, home to around 2 million residents. There is precious little humidity in the air outside and your skin dries out quickly after you arrive. Residents have acclimated to it, but for visitors like me, it takes time for the body to adapt.

The ubiquitous building material of El Paso is stone. It's found in fences surrounding many of the homes in Morningside Heights and in the walls of a good number of homes as well. My Dad's rectangular lot on Pierce is completely surrounded by a rock wall constructed over thirty years ago. The lawns in this neighborhood of El Paso contain mostly desert flora but many have been concreted over with only small patches of desert plants. Water is precious here and the growth of the metropolitan area has drawn heavily on the Rio Grande, leaving little to be squandered on grass lawns and big leaf trees, My father has a tall fruitless Mulberry tree, the only green in a lawn of concrete. It's nearly 50 years old, planted at a time when water was more plentiful.

I run a few blocks west up pierce then turn left south on Russell Street and run five blocks to Harrison Avenue-the avenues of Morningside Heights are named after U.S. Presidents: Fillmore, Polk, Taylor, Tyler and Harrison, south from Pierce. I turn right and proceed up the incline of Harrison toward Alabama Street ten blocks west of Russell. At Alabama, I come upon Clendinin Elementary School-they are thanking the school board for giving them funds for something, the billboard out front declares. I dart around parents and students hurrying to school. El Paso is anxious to start a new day. I turn right onto Alabama heading north up a steep incline toward Pierce and McKelligon Canyon Road a long block beyond. There I turn left and follow the asphalt ribbon that snakes its way five miles into the canyon in the Franklin Mountains that gives the road its name. I won't run the ribbon's length only the first quarter mile or so. It's a very steep right-curving climb that will test the will of any runner. As I pump my legs running on my forefoot, the progress of each footfall seems measured in inches, but each puts me closer to the crest. Every muscle and bone of my body is opposed to this uphill climb, but like the Greek Sisyphus, I persevere believing that somehow I'm keeping death at a distance.

Morningside Heights is built at the base of the Franklin Mountains and I've been continually running uphill. Since I started I have climbed 510 feet, the steepest part of the ascent began at Alabama and McKelligon Canyon Road. From there to the crest of the hill inside the canyon, I had climbed 190 feet. After I crest the hill and jog a short ways into the canyon, I turn around and begin my journey home, careening down the hill toward Alabama and onto Pierce for the steady downhill run back to my dad's place. Along the way, I pass soldiers running up Pierce toward the canyon-their daily physical training.

When I return home, I encounter the grieving faces of MR and EA. MR has been with my mother and father for over 40 years, while EA has been with them over 20 years. MR is past retirement age but has been coming every Monday to do my parents laundry and ironing. EA is the household cook, nurse, and housekeeper. Sweaty as I am, I embrace them each in turn, their tear stained faces the embodiment of grief. I console them with my barely understandable Spanish mixed with English phrases; they respond with a combination of Spanish mixed with English distorted by their sobbing. My father enters the kitchen from his morning shower and the two women turn their attention to him. I slip upstairs, shower and change into clean underwear and t-shirt and the same jeans I wore the night before. I return to the kitchen and find my two sisters and my niece seated around the dining table waiting for me to join them for breakfast.

I hug each of my sisters EV and LC, my niece CB and kiss my seated father on his forehead and I clasp his shoulder with my right arm, hugging him to me. He is sobbing and after a few moments he regains his composure and I take my place at the table. Once the meal begins, the conversation gets lighter and we begin to joke about the arrival of our youngest sister later in the day. We also make plans for our meeting with Martin Funeral Home, where my mother had been taken from the hospital. My mother had purchased a complete burial package from the home that supposedly left few details of her funeral and burial to be handled. She had selected her casket, set aside the dress she wanted to be buried in, and paid the costs of preparing her remains for burial, the room to hold an afternoon rosary, and the cost of the hearse and limousines to take her and her family to the church for funeral mass and to the cemetery for her burial. You would think that there was nothing else left to decide but there were more details that needed to be addressed. We had to discuss the timing of the rosary, church service, and burial.

During and after breakfast, Dad's phone-the same number since the late 1950s-continued to ring as members of the community called to offer condolences and comfort to my father. My oldest sister and niece were also using their cell phones to call members of the Filipino community that knew and loved my Mom to notify them of her death. The unofficial leader of the community, PG-the one person who would get the word out to everyone-was not answering her phone, nor was Mom's best friend, HM. The one number we had for Mom's brother SQ, had been disconnected. We were all speculating that he and his wife ML had moved to Houston to be with their children and grandchildren.

After breakfast, we decided to drive to the home of Mom's best friend and notify her of Mom's passing. It was not going to be a pleasant task. HM was wheelchair bound and was short and thin as a rail. You would think that she would break if you hugged her too tightly. But that impression would be completely dispelled once you looked into her eyes. They were the eyes of an iron-willed matriarch who a couple of years back had survived bypass surgery that would have killed a lesser person. The sole support for her daughter and two grand children she was alive because she was not ready to die. We all piled into my Dad's white Chevrolet Uplander-the first new car (minivan, actually) he every purchased-and drove to HM's home in the Mountain View suburb of El Paso-north on Dyer Street to its intersection with Hondo Pass then left. When we arrive, HM's daughter CM was sitting outside on the front porch. As we all exited the van and approached the house, CM called out “hello kiddy boy”-my adolescent nickname I hadn't heard in some time. She greeted me as if it had only been a couple of days since we last saw one another-though years had intervened. “Hello CM,” I replied bending to hug her small thin shape. She greeted my sisters, niece, and father in turn and then led us inside to her mother, who was seated in her wheel chair at the kitchen table, papers strewn before her. She looked up and accepted each of our greetings in turn, though you could sense that she was upset.

Unknown to us she had called right after we had left to visit her and EV had told her that Mom had died. HM was grieved at the loss, but also hurt and angry that we had waited so long to notify her of her best friend's passing. We were all feeling guilty and chastened by her disapproving look. She listened to my father's explanation first, then to my oldest sister and niece. My younger sister and I stood quietly in the background and said nothing. After an awkward silence following the explanations, HM finally spoke stating that we were to let her know when the rosary and funeral mass were to be held and then ensure that we came by and drove her to both. It was not a request and my father assured her we would. We left, ran a few errands and then returned home to await the arrival of our youngest sister, DD. Her plane was landing around 2:00 PM and LC volunteered to pick her up at the airport.

March 8, 2006 - The Journey Across the River Styx

March 8, 2006 - The Journey Across the River Styx

For the more than half a century I've been on earth, I've known little of death. My earliest recollection was the death of my grandmother in May 1953. She was a mere 48 years old, much younger than I am now. I was nearly eight years old at the time. She had died in William Beaumont General Hospital where my two sisters, my father, and my niece were now. Back then my father had taken my grandmother's body back to where she was born in Brooklyn, Mississippi. The funeral was held in St. John's Baptist Church, not far from the family homestead and she was buried in the cemetery on the church property. The church is gone now and the cemetery is slowly fading away, its graves untended, its dead nearly forgotten, their kin having paid the ferry man to join their relatives. My father wept uncontrollably at the funeral of my grandmother. It was the first time I had seen him weep openly and I felt bad that I wasn't experiencing the same depth of loss.

In the aftermath of my grandmother's passing I was at a loss because she and I had lived together for most of the time I could remember. I was now reunited with my real mother and father, who I knew as relatives who would regularly visit my grandmother and me and leave again after a week or two. I was now leaving with them and the person who had been a constant presence in my life was no where to be seen. I can't remember if I had gone to the casket to see my grandmother lying in repose before her funeral. I can remember seeing her from a distance in her coffin, lying as if asleep.

After we buried my grandmother, from that day in May 1953 onward, death kept his distance from me. I saw him in passing however, during funeral masses at Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Church at the corner of Byron Street and Truman Avenue, where I spent my Sundays as an adolescent. I was quite devout as a kid and the ritual of the mass was a comfort to me grappling with the mysteries of life. I had a morbid fear of death and it would throw me into fits of panic in my pre-teen and teenage years. As a result, I steered clear of death and do not recall attending many funeral masses once I got older.

Now, standing beside my mother's lifeless form in the intensive care unit of William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas, death has made its presence known once more. Only this time it's up close and personal, no luxury of being distant and uninvolved. This time, death had come for someone very close. Looking down at her, she appeared to be in a peaceful sleep, her face no different than all the time I had seen her at home in the living room dozing on the small sofa, her lips parted slightly as they are now, in our living room at home a mile down the road from the hospital. The only indication that she wasn't asleep was the absence of the rhythmic rising of her breast and the coolness of her forehead that was chasing the warmth from face and neck. I kept touching her checks and neck treasuring the warmth I felt as the last lingering bit of life that her body held. It was the last of her essence and I wanted to feel it as long as it remained a link to the life that it once signified. As long as I could feel the warmth, the form in repose was still my mother.

Nearby, at the foot of my mother's bed, my grief-engulfed father had been drawn into the practical chores that death demands: signatures on forms; one that granted permission to move my mother out of the world of the living and into the world of the dead-the personification of the Greek myth of Charon requiring a fare of one coin (obol) to ferry the dead across the River Styx. The bed she now lay in belonged to bodies still clinging to life, not to those that life had fled. Those that life had abandoned were transported to the hospital morgue where they were kept refrigerated to preserve against the decay waiting to ravage them. It took a signed form to make that transfer. It took another signature on a form to move her body from the hospital morgue to the funeral home where she would be prepared for her final journey into that good night. When all the forms were signed, we-my two sisters, my young niece-a favorite of my mother, my father, and me each said our last goodbye to my mother and we left to allow the hospital staff to prepare her for the first leg of her final journey. Being at my mother's bedside for how long I had no idea, time seemed to stand still. When we walked outside the curtained area surrounding my mother's bed, time seemed to resume. It was as if the entire hospital staff had left the floor as we sat crying at our mother's bedside. Once we had cried ourselves out the staff reappeared and continued going about their task of trying to keep the other residence of the ICU alive.

Once back at home, the five of us tried our best to console one another but we were each caught up in our own grief. Each felt some sense of guilt that we hadn't done enough. If we had she would still be alive. My guilt was that I had been the son that had left home and hadn't returned as often, nor for as long, as I should. Living over 1200 miles away, I was separated from the problems my aging parents were confronting, as they grew older. My mother had helped me leave home, while my father was away. He was off on maneuvers with his Army unit before I graduated high school and I had enlisted in the Navy on my mother's signature. She knew how much it meant for me to begin making my way in the world.

She had once been hospitalized with a blood infection that my father was afraid might be the death of her, over ten years ago. She had survived the ailment with the help of a clever doctor who finally diagnosed the problem and developed a drug regimen to combat and overcome the threat. In the midst of her ordeal she frantically called me wanting to confess something that she had done when I was a young child. It was nothing of any consequence these many years later I assured her. I told her she was my hero, the woman who had found a way to bring herself and her infant son out of the war-ravaged Philippine Islands to the land of wealth and prosperity. She had left her daughter SY from a previous marriage with her paternal grandmother. It had been her dying husband request that she do so. It had been my mother’s most agonizing decision. She made up for it fifteen years later, when SY wrote to Mom and Dad requesting to come to the U.S. Nearly fully grown, SY lived with us for about a year before she left the nest and moved to San Francisco to make a life of her own. EV had called SY and gave her the terrible news. SY would be arriving on Thursday with her husband BB for the rosary and funeral.

In many ways I hardly knew my mother. For most of my life I knew little of her early years in the Philippines. I knew little of her family in the Islands and hardly any of her early life with my father other than it was hard-two children to raise by herself on an enlisted man's income in the deep south of the late 1940s-I was living with my grandmother and my youngest sister wasn't yet born. We never discussed those times. In recent years, I had begun to ask both her and my dad about life in the Philippines when the two of them met. She described her recollections of that time, but her memory had lost some of the detail that makes a story compelling. She grew up with her uncle and aunt but couldn't remember the name of the school she attended as a young girl, nor the name of the company where she got her first job. However, what she did remember gave me a better picture of her as a young girl. Each time I would record our conversations and later transcribe the comments. She is captured on micro cassettes and Hi8 video tape, the sound and moving images of her echoing from the past, giving me some lingering sense of her beyond the still pictures and flowing handwriting she left in her letters.

My sisters and niece all drifted off to their homes nearby and my father and I were left to deal with our separate grief alone. My father decided to try to fall asleep and I retired to my bedroom upstairs directly above his. I lay in bed listening to the sounds of El Paso at night. You can hear the distant sound of train whistles that are a good five miles away on the southern edge of the city near the border with Mexico and you can hear the sound of the wind gusting outside, not uncommon for late January. Before I dozed off I had hoped that my mother's spirit would visit me in the night and say goodbye. My wife IM was visited in dreams by both her father and mother after their passing though it was some time after their deaths. A visit was not meant for me though and I fell into a dreamless sleep.