I treasure my 3 weeks with Jesu

"When I bought our dolls Popoy and Mimay as a gift for you, people laughed when you treated them as your kids. They laughed at you not knowing that they were laughing at someone else’s dream... your dream...our dream." – an excerpt from the letter of my husband that was read on Homeboy.

That was how we started our innocent dream to build our family.

As if it wasn’t enough for us to endure the medical check-ups, the fear that goes with it, the false hopes we get every month and the swallowing of pride every time someone asks as to when are we going to have a child, we also had to endure the mockery from those just watching from afar.

Their malicious laughter that reverberated within our souls has been substituted with their tears – tears of shame and tears from pure sadness that have brought them directly to the painful reality of our loss. Along with those tears are tears from those with the purest of hearts, from people who have undergone losses and from those who simply know how it is to love.

Our miracle baby, Elia Jesu Reyes, is gone.

Elia Jesu has always partaken of God’s nature that is divine, from his conception up to his death. Thousands of people interposed between God and me for him to be conceived, from our families and friends, convents all over the world, religious groups to the audience of the talk shows like Mel & Joey, Showbiz Stripped and S-Files, where I declared my last desire. My last desire.

Alas, my last desire was announced through a quote from Archangel Gabriel in Luke 1:31 and through pictures of cherubims sent to my husband through e-mail. My baby finally arrived in my womb to be born on Nov. 10, 2006.

Every day of my pregnancy, I sang to him Ama Namin (Our Father) and You Are My Sunshine. Little did I know that these songs would mean exactly what they say. In Ama Namin, there is a line that says "sundin ang loob Mo dito sa lupa para nang sa langit" ("Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven"). It proved true to us from the time we knew he had a complex heart disease, to this day on that he is a certified angel. My husband and I could only surrender to God’s will and to the memory of how much Jesu loved the song. He had always reacted to it when he wasn’t born yet until the time of his last breath.

The last line in You Are My Sunshine is "please don’t take my sunshine away."

Honestly, there were times when this would sound to me like "please don’t take my SON(shine) away." I disregarded the nagging voice of death; but in the late afternoon of Dec. 2, 2006, the voice and the face of death could no longer be denied. We saw our Jesu lying crucified – in his bassinet with his tiny hands and feet connected to so many tubes and the cut on his side (due to surgery) which reminded us of Jesus’ side pierced by a lance. Our miracle baby has gone home, carrying our last whispers of Ama Namin.

Now, I can imagine him smiling, giggling and peeping through one opened eye as if checking on us if we are still by his side. Those were his habits when he was still alive. His being playful still has been confirmed to us a few days ago by a girl named O.J. Jacinto who dreamt that she was in heaven and by the door peeped a cheerful boy who greeted her, "Hi Ate O.J.!" Needless to say, he was our Jesu living up to who he should have been.

My last desire is gone. I am dreamless now. I can’t even make a wish. I can only hold my husband’s hand as we carry on the journey we had begun. I am in total resignation.