October

Dear LFL,

Yesterday, I sat at the hospital watching over D with her daughters. Little did we know that D would be leaving us an hour later. I was glad to have been there, to say goodbye. I told her daughters that of our senses, hearing is the last to go. My last words to her were "Hi D, we will be ok. Whenever you are ready. We will see you soon enough."

It was all over after soon after. I left and her son came in, then her youngest brother and her sister-in-law arrived. Then as everyone was preoccupied with one thing or another, she passed away. It was so quiet, so peaceful, no one noticed until P said "Mama muerta, she's not breathing".

I think it was better that way, not like the monitor countdown we went through with you. The monitor that showed your blood pressure and heart rate lowering hour by hour, then minute by minute, then nothing. I remember the sound of that Nothing. When we all just started crying, lost in our individual grief, falling apart as a family.

So back to D. It was a beautiful death. She was so happy these last few months. I would visit her at home, then at the hospital where she was these last 3 months. She was always so happy to hear what was going on, to feed me; proud of what our generation was doing; and always opinionated about everything.

Looking at her yesterday, I thought she would be with us much longer. She was breathing strong, and looked very calm. Not what you would expect someone who is losing life to look like. Her daughter N whispered to me, 'she's been ready a long time, I don't know what she is waiting for." Maybe she heard N, and figured, "that's right, I'm ready and I trust completely".

Tomorrow, we, your immediate family and the families of your brother and sisters, will meet again at Lolo and Lola's tomb, right near where you are, and say goodbye to D. She wanted no wake, just one Mass, and be buried before the sun set. She was Moslem that way. Well, she is getting almost everything she wanted, only the Philippine bureaucracy takes more than 24 hours to get a death certificate. In our family's burial patch, she will be beside her parents. She is the first of our generation to join you, aside from the cousin we never met who died at the Vietnam War.

An exemplary death, she faced it with incredible courage at the very end. Much the way you did LFL. Resigned and trusting, unafraid. For that, I will remember her. And celebrate her life. Because she has no wake, I am feeling her death more deeply. Appreciating in the beginning how creative she was, how organized, how strong, and towards the end, how simple, how trusting, and how forgiving she became.

We will miss her, as we miss you.

October. The month of your birth, of Lola's birth and death, of Tita Ch's death, and now, of D's passing.

Love,

no.8