Death is not new to me. I've seen it up close and personal my first experience of death was when I was 13 when I lost a brother from drowning and thereafter, I have spent some summers saying goodbye to my grandmother, father, mother and another brother.  The loss is excruciatingly painful but nothing would have prepared me from the loss of a spouse. I lost my Steve from lingering illness also one summer. Sometimes it feels like it was years ago, oftentimes like it was just yesterday so it doesn’t matter when he died because as I write this blog it feels like he just left me this morning. What I've realized now is that everyone grieves the loss of a loved one in different ways, none is of lesser degree and intensity than the other regardless of affinity.

My  Darling Steve

7th Battalion Royal Australian Regimen

My soldier, my hero

There are two types of widows, the bereaved and the relieved. I am writing about the bereavement and widowhood of a loving married couple because there is something uniquely sad about the lost of a spouse especially if the marriage was one of more of tribulations amidst the trials. In every marriage the saddest rite of passage will be widowhood. It is the fulfillment of the last part of the nuptial vow “‘till death do us part." If you break down the sentences in a nuptial vow, the first three are separated by a coma. "For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, for richer or poorer,"; but the last line ends with a period. " 'till death do us part." full stop. It is the finality in the contract of marriage, terminated by a natural event that seems to be so surreal and unnatural to the spouse left behind recalling their marriage vows.

 A marriage goes through the cycle of the marriage vow. "For better or for worst," is the acceptance to endure the "growing pains" of the marriage as it evolves through the years. The couple learn, teach, harness  skills as the they acquire traits and habits of togetherness more on complementing each other 's better and worst  not conflicting or  contradicting each other. The better or  worse in both of them should enhance or improve  each other in order for the marriage to grow and sustain a loving relationship.

"In sickness or in health"  is the support required in the fragility of the human body. It requires allowances to accommodate, synchronize when one is lagging behind in their journey to the road of marriage sometimes to walk together, run together, and sometimes to carry the other in order to achieve the goals of marriage.

"For richer and for poorer," Is the support required in the uncertainty of time as the couple goes through the cycle of" have's and have not’s:, the key is to learn to ride out the "have not’s.  Again, it requires unison of action and synchronicity.

These lines of the marriage vow is telling us what is called upon in a marriage. It is character building in growing as married couple to be there for each other no matter what. If adhered to the fullest extent of the vow, it makes the marriage stronger; it allows the couple to grow through experience as a loving married couple. The bond deepens as the marriage grows to sustain all the byproducts of the marriage. Raising children, providing a home, supporting each other's career and retirement. This is the part where the two becomes one in purpose and direction. This is the part of the marriage contract where we are required to be on the same page with our spouse and walk side by side.

But the last part of the marriage vow "'till death do us part." blows everything away. When the two that became one, death leaves  the one left behind to stand again as " THE ONE". Death not only dissolves the marriage, it dissolves the dream of a lifetime of togetherness. It alters the picture painted by two people functioning in unison, synchronicity, rituality and routine. The picture altered by death of a spouse is the sum total of their intimacy. Intimacy is not only about physicality leading to cohabitation and procreation. Intimacy is the mind set of willingness to grow old together despite of what comes along in the marriage, intimacy is the dedication to the loyalty and devotion that the person you married is your significant other that makes you whole. Intimacy is the ability to see the small irritants that comes along as it is; A "small irritant" that cannot be larger than the will to stay together 'till death do us part”

That is why widowhood is a unique sense of loss. "The one" cannot be hugged enough, loved enough or comforted enough by well meaning family and friends.  The grief creates a volcanic crater everyone can look but no one can grasp its depth. It may look placid on the surface but may be boiling deep within, simmering a massive eruption of despair, desire, denial, anger, guilt and confusion. It's like a whirpool of emotion. The love shared is now muted and unseen; it plays in the mind of the one left behind. Nobody can see it, nobody can hear it but by the one left behind. The grief is so personal nobody can encroach upon it simply because of the intimacy  brought upon by the marriage; it is a one on one relationship no matter how wide the extension of the by products of the marriage is, it is personal and access is restricted.

The Lord knows the emotional whirlpool widowhood entails. The Lord looks upon the widow and orphan children with great mercy and love. Psalm 68:5  Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation" Mark 12:40 "He who devour widow's house with false pretenses will receive the greatest condemnation". Exodus 22:23 " If you afflict the widow and orphan children in any wise, if they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry." and my favorite  is Psalm 146:9 "The Lord will destroy the house of the proud, but will establish the border of the widow."  If a widow suffers injustice and maltreatment, the Lord only waits for the widow's cry and call unto the Him and the Lord to deal with them according to His  own justice.

There is the unwritten rule set aside in a widow's heart; that remembering the departed triggers the memory of experience of great love and not loss. The Bible says that a widow is required to give reverend, to cherish, to give respect, to be grateful that a person walked into our life for a common purpose of establishing unison of purpose, synchronicity of action, and establishing order in the family unit a marriage brings about in the solemn vow before God that what God put together, let no one put asunder. This can be done by one single act, to pray for the soul of the departed spouse. The Bible said a widow who doesn't pray for the soul of the departed might have as well divorced him.

While the void can be filled with the possibility of finding another love, the memory and the loved shared with the departed is forever etched in the memory and the heart. The time shared together cannot be duplicated, equaled or surpassed. While widowhood is a love lost, it is also a life to be found again no matter how painful it is to accept, while death is final, life goes on;  one painful day at a time, sometimes an hour at a time. The widow may find another love, another life but it is not the same love and life because that chapter has concluded, that story has now has come to a close. There is no more adding to it or taking away from it.  The covenant of marriage has been fulfilled in the story book of the one left behind. "till death do us part." 

Living overseas for the past 10 years now, I sometimes feel a part of me is slowing ebbing away as I submerge myself into the Western culture and so a vacation back to Manila always seems promising as if to reclaim the memories and re-establish ties with places, family, people and the culture I was born to that I cannot and will not disown because I have the skin tone of a typical brown country girl and oh, I purposely left out the word ‘’short”.  I am only 5’4... ok...5’2! it depends on the heels I am wearing alright!

The last time I went home two years ago, I had the bittersweet experience of watching our family home being demolished room by room as it makes way for progress, modernity and convenience.  I sorted and packed books my mother (an author of children’s books) wrote and family albums.  Then the memories of my father started to roll.  For someone who was well educated, ( he was a lawyer, and had a Master of Sociology from University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and PhD from Chicago Institute of Technology) my father was a very funny man, despite the fact that he was a typical Filipino patriarch who ruled with the “my way or the highway...and  “ there is no democracy in this house”, he had this funny bone and in fact you can be spared from his wrath if you can answer back wittingly or funny.

It was my father that made me realised I have a photographic memory at the age of 7.  My father would read me this book Pepe and Pilar, I would stare at the page and listen to him reading and memorised it. When I came home from my first day of school I showed my father this book the school gave me, it’s Pepe and Pilar, then I started “reading” to him as he turned the pages,  he couldn’t believe it, his daughter can read day one in school! But he went one page too slow and I was reading what was supposed to be lines for the next page. He just laughed and said I have the makings of a good lawyer... so off I went to law school after finishing my BA in Political Science, I begged him to give me a year off as I needed a holiday from 15 years of nonstop schooling since that Pepe & Pilar experience but before I can start mapping out my year off school, he quickly snapped “ that four years in college doing your pre-law course, that was your holiday, it’s now time for the real deal...law school. He used to introduced me to his friends as “ My daughter, she’s in law school, majoring in fashion law.”  because of my flair for fashion.

My father, bless his soul meant well and did well raising 13 children with my mother always on his side. He was a benevolent dictator in our house and my mother supplied the nurturing placidity and calmness badly needed in a tiny house filled with children and house helpers together my parents raised doctors and lawyers’ a feat I don’t think their children will ever equal. These days before I go to sleep I pray to God  “ To please let me go through this stage in my life of raising teenagers without seeing them with unnecessary body piercing, tattoo and may they not post pictures in any social networking sites that they will regret later on in life.”

My father was not a touchy- feely dad, he seldom showed his elation except through laughter and  we grew up with the saying” we are most serious especially when we are joking”. His reasoning for his emotional aloofness was that he had 13 children, he cannot play favourites. So we grew up with no major dramas, not fighting and bickering because we're all going to get the rod, my father is a believer of " spare the rod, spoil the child." We simply deal with the situation at hand with indirect assaults...” widen the door, Cyndi Lauper is coming!” one of my sibings would yell every time I come home with the Cyndi Lauper get up.   We love to coin new names for each other. My eldest sister who migrated to America when I was 3 years old is called the “legend” because she’s always talked about but rarely seen. So far, I’ve seen her back in Manila whenever there is someone in the hospital dying or have died. And we called our father, "father" for giving sermons every now and then. My eldest brother would ring every Sunday which is our family get together lunch at home asking if the mass is over and if father had already delivered the sermon before coming for lunch.

And ah, my brothers. I have four that came before me. They were given the tasks of babysitting me. They love horse racing and would go to the tracks. One day they took me along with them provided I would swear never to tell our father. One of them, Ariel would sit me on his shoulders so I can see clearly every race while I hold his ticket for luck. When we came home my father asked me where we went and one of them said we went to the zoo. My father  bend over and asked his cute little girl what she saw in the zoo. My answer was horse...and he said. “That’s good, what else” looking at my brothers, I quickly answered, “ another horse, many horses father and they are running in the same direction called the finish line!”.

Our family  tease each other as to who is the adopted one, my youngest brother is the child of the garbage collector who left him at our front door, the sight of the garbage truck made his scamper far away as possible. I remember  the day I broke down in tears because my brothers were teasing me at being the adopted one because my features were way off from their rich aristocratic features, my colour is darker, I am shorter and I have a button nose. I ran to my father disturbing his coffee and newspaper time to tell him what my up-to-no-good brothers were doing and being the ever so Papa’s girl, my father folded his paper, got up from his easy chair and fronted my siblings and yelled” How dare you all tell her that she’s adopted  I was waiting for her to turn 18! Come along girl and let me tell you about your real parents.” as he ushered me to his room where he keeps a stash of Hershey’s chocolate and handed me one. I came running out proud and mighty showing off to my brother’s a bar of imported Hershey’s chocolate. While they need to get an A in class to get a Hershey’s bar, all it took for me was to be a drama queen.

I am blogging again after more than a year of hibernation. I took up photography as a hobby but did formal studies and been making picture montage with my favourite music and posting in on youtube. I think I am improving although, like anything else in life, it is a continuing education, a process, until we stop in exhaustion, exasperation, complacency or sweet surrender.

The funny thing about life being a photograph is that our life snapped for viewing either for personal use, to show to friends and families, to strangers, to the omnipresent being we call God. Once the exposure becomes a print, we open ourselves to judgement; our own, from others and to God.

So if life is a photograph, can we avoid the paparazzi known as challenges?

We may actively and willingly participate in the picture taking, or be randomly involve in some other people’s picture taking, or create the scenario to get attention  and our life gets snapped into it, it may come out blurry or picture perfect, cast away as insignificant photo or cherished like a prize possession. But there’s no way of avoiding it, we will be photographed with or without our consent as long as we are alive.  Our life will be an active participant into someone else’s life. Whatever the reason, our life is the subject, like the  colors brought by the sunset it's there for others to look in awe or to ignore. Until we die, then that sun will never shine the same way again  to someone else's life.

If life is like a photograph, strike a pose, make it a funny one, make it a happy one.  Make it a caring one, and if a picture is taken of you at your lowest point in  life or those of others where you are in it too, show them your heart. Don't hide your face and move further in the background obstructed from view. Don’t worry about who will view it, or whether the picture will be thrown away or cherished. The big picture is that God has seen it, He smiled at our life picture when we were happy, He cried with us when we were sad, He knows our heart each time we digitally manipulated our mistakes. In His eyes there is no enhancement, no compression, no over exposure. God will always take the perfect picture of our selves whether we like the picture or not, He decides what to do with it. He will always allow us to strike a pose each day we live, He calls it “free will” to do whatever our conscience dictates but He decides on the final print.  As what the Bible says to cast away in the fires of hell or cherished in heaven. Say cheese.

My brother died on a Thursday at the break of dawn just like what he told me many summers ago, he was 54. But I think I lost him years before that, when he started drinking.  The bottle did not just took his life, it took away the husband, the father, the son, the friend and the brother that I knew so well.

I was three or four when I came to the realization of this person.  I came to him asking him to fix my toy.  He was a tower of a man, fidgeting with my toy for minutes until he came to the conclusion that it was beyond repair. He smiled with his huge ears extending further almost like a comic character, and offered to show me how to play with a spinning top instead. I looked at him in awe, this is my brother, he will not let me down.

Did I felt let down because he became an alcoholic despite his achievements, became a lawyer, a public servant, a brilliant legal mind? To feel “let down” is to expect something from that person. To be on a receiving end of an expectation. I didn’t have any expectations from my brother.  I only have acceptance. Acceptance that the person he was outside was not the person he was inside they are two separate and different person and how the two co exist into one being and still managed a spark long enough for everyone who loved him to see this person, boots and all with his alcohol addiction, a speck of a man stood out, the man we all loved, stood by, prayed for, reached out for, made efforts to intervene for him to stop drinking, cried for and cried with.

The keyhole to this person and situation is love.  No matter how hard it is to look at someone we care for submerged into their own addiction, it does not urge us to look away, and if we cannot  see the person we love in his physical sense because it is hidden behind slurs, clumsiness, incoherent conversation, we search for that person that we knew and usually we find that in our hearts, irrespective of what our mind would often tell us that he is not worth the time, effort and money because he refused to help himself, and we do not have to be remind ourselves where he will end up.

Our heart is the ultimate barometer of our attachment or detachment to other people. The difference between attachment or detachment is a just one act that will be forever etched in our hearts that gave us this sublime, pure joy or pain and even hatred.  That act for me was when he tried to fix my toy. I knew that he loved me and no matter what he did from then on, I’ve made up my mind that he will always be my big brother, right or wrong, he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother. 

That final days he was surrounded by family who did not judge him, no "I told you so", only prayer every time he let go of the most excruciating sigh, that it will be his last one and for God to give him the grace of merciful relief. Those who were not able to travel to see him for the last time, we cried for his release from his pain. Most of all we cried because we just lost a brother we knew and loved.

When you come to this part of my blog you are praying with me that eternal rest grant upon the soul of my brother Butch and let God's perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

Thank You.

Let me start with a short overview of Australia and Australian language.

In case you don’t know, Australia is called “the land down under” because it lies in the Southern Hemisphere. Nope not that Southern Hemisphere you think is near Germany. Australia is nowhere near Europe. It is found in the Pacific that’s right near Pearl Harbor and Blue Hawaii,  just come down a bit more.( No innuendos intended)   Australia is the largest island in the world and continent by itself.

The original people of Australia called aborigines have no known connection to other living race. They are usually classified as a separate race called Australoid, yup asteroid comes from above and australoid, down under. Later, it became the dumping ground for convicts from England.  Australia’s name came about when Captain Arthur Phillip ready to sail together with 800 convicts and 200 soldiers to this unknown frontier Captain Thomas Cook discovered seventeen years earlier, walked in the palace to ask the Queen what name should be given to this unknown big mass of land. The Queen, probably a combination of bad hair day and PMS, yelled to Captain Arthur Phillip “ Oust r yah!” meaning get lost!  So Captain Arthur Phillip walked out of the palace, sailed the sea and when he landed in this unknown continent named it Oustryah that later became Australia

The nature of the Australian language is to not to be offensive to anyone in particular but everyone in general. Australian insults and vulgarities treat everyone as equal, so don’t fear, you have not been left out.

Why do we blog:

Freedom at a safe distance. Freedom of expression restricted and censured only by our own code of morality and conscience. Blogging is a take it as I am expression, if you don’t like what you’re reading, click and move on. Blogging is a self expression at a safe distance and  quench the thirst of the need to be heard whether or not it is actually read or not, mere opportunity that someone might read it, like it or dislike is there is enough. Unlike feelings we bottle up inside until it ferments and explode. Blogging is channelling our feelings into the “to whom it may concern” world. 

Every blogger is a pundit, an authority in their own right, we write about people, things and events that impact our day to day living. It is our life, who can tell us what and what not affects us, we hold the power to filter feedback and reactions in our blog or website, we can ban, delete, discard entries by other.  Such is not an easy task in the real world.   

The need to connect and disconnect is within the realm of safe distance, in real life we cannot say “bugger off” and not expect a form of reaction. We write and get feedbacks without our space being invaded, we let strangers inside our blog without feeling threatened, intimidated, but of course this “allowance” depends entirely on how much privacy the blogger wants to maintain.  In my case, I keep my personal details private and respect the privacy of people in my life that’s self censorship based on my own code of conduct. But my thoughts, I leave open to anyone to dissect in my  blog and web space.

About this blogger:

My writing style in blogging is the same as writing in my diary. I write as the thoughts come along.  I am not particular with grammar, spelling, syntax. Coming from a country where English in not my first language, and being a migrant, I spend considerable time  at work and day to day assimilation in this English speaking country consciously trying to communicate effectively with correct grammar, syntax, accent and spelling. I am not doing that in my blog. I was educated in Manila where American English is the medium of instruction, moved to Australia where British English is use. My spelling and grammar lapses are probably brought about by these juggling  inside my Asian head.

Because blogging is a self expression, it is part and parcel of myself. The grammatical and juxtapose errors are just one of my many flaws, my idiosyncrasies, naivety, ignorance and human tendency of “ know it all” complex and  you’ll notice that in my writing. I would pinch a line or two from a song, I love music. Music with lyrics that makes sense, capture my imagination, inspire me, empathized with me, words that hit home, spot on with what my current mood I am in at any given moment.