The sad story of Mrs. L

Once there was a love

Deeper than any ocean.

Once there was a love,

Filled with such devotion

It was yours and mine.

To hold and cherish

And to keep for a lifetime.

Then he went away

On that lonely day;

Once there was a love

— The first part of Once There Was A Love by Joe Feliciano

She died of a broken heart, broken into a thousand pieces that it was impossible to put it back together again.

Toward the end of The King & I, one of the king’s wives came out of his death room in tears, her face crumpled with grief as she announced to the other wives and to the dozens of children, “He died of a broken heart.”

That was how Mrs. L died — of a broken heart.

She was diagnosed with cancer which she bravely fought for very brief six months, doubling up in pain on her sickbed, begging her daughter who was nursing her at home to please, please, please, “Give me a pain reliever.” The pain relievers were never enough. More than the pain from cancer, it was the gnawing pain through the 25 years that was unbearable, a lingering pain that was consuming her body and soul but which she kept to herself, putting up a front so that her children would not worry, even if the children were more than willing to share that pain, or take it all away from her, but she never allowed them to. She was that good a mother and, yes, a wife.

She was a medical student so she knew the condition of her body; the truth couldn’t be hidden from her. So she planned her funeral to the last detail — what kind of casket she wanted to rest in peace in, what kind of white dress she should wear, how the casket should not touch the sides of the door when her remains were brought to the province, what to serve during the wake and, because she was a music lover even if she didn’t sing in public but only in the bathroom, and, most important of all, what song to play at the necrological service in church before she was brought to her final resting place…Joe Feliciano’s Once There Was A Love.

It didn’t take long for those close to Mrs. L to realize why she chose that song. It turned out that every word of every line of every stanza of that song vividly told the reasons and the real story. Then he went away on that lonely day, once there was a love…

No, he didn’t really go away. Mrs. L’s husband stayed with her until she breathed her last but was he there only physically but not emotionally? Was his mind somewhere else even as Mrs. L slept a troubled sleep (because of the pain that wouldn’t go away, you know) inches away from him, refusing to live any longer and actually hurrying her final leave-taking?

The whole world knew that the husband was philandering and, sob and sigh, Mrs. L was the last to know. Rather, she refused to know. She had been hearing about another woman brazenly encroaching into the marriage which appeared to be very ideal, and still another woman, but she believed only what her deceptive husband (“It’s not true, it’s not true!”) and not what her concerned relatives and well-meaning close friends were telling her. A martyr of the highest kind, fit to be shot at the Old Luneta, faithful to an unfaithful husband, loyal to the very end, proving true to her vow at the altar on their wedding day more than four decades earlier “to love and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, ‘till death do us part…” Even if her husband wasn‘t true to her, reneging on that sacred vow.

And to think that he looked so meek (as a lamb), so gentle (as the summer wind) and so saintly (there’s the rub!) that, when those who were the last to know learned about the whole story, they gasped in disbelief, “I thought he couldn’t hurt a fly.” In fact, he was a real-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Just a few months after Mrs. L was laid to rest, the ugly truth exploded on the Internet where was splashed a picture of the unfaithful husband and his (illegitimate) family, all smiles as if they didn’t hurt a wife who was faithful and loving and loyal and caring and nourishing to the very end of her life cut short not by cancer but by the pain that she kept inside her for years. The husband sired more love kids, it was later found out, with other women.

That’s why those close to Mrs. L sincerely believed that it was not the cancer that killed her, it was that pain that must have caused her immune system to weaken to such a low that any illness, not just cancer, could have claimed her body.

A picture of her smiling, so sweet and so beautiful, perched on top of her white casket. She was born beautiful, living a sheltered life, staying at a dormitory run by nuns when she enrolled in medicine, so protected by her father who didn’t want her to marry that (the father had a “hunch”) man but she married him anyway only after her father died.

Now we understood why Mrs. L chose that Joe Feliciano song to send her off.

Up There, free from pain and with her Inay and her Papa and her four brothers for company, she must be singing portions of the song but this time, sans tears, sans regrets.

God bless you, Mrs. L. You are a lady too good to be true.

Now I don’t know how I can go on

Somehow I feel so all alone

Wondering where I’ve gone wrong.

Once there was a love

That will never come again.

So let’s not pretend

Once there was a love

But that was long ago.

— the last part of the Joe Feliciano song

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