Who is that? I wondered. Tall, crabby, fallen face, mouth somewhat turned down. She looks vaguely familiar. Then I recognize – my God, that’s me in the mirror looking old and ugly. It is downright depressing.
I am getting old. I know it best when I get up from a chair. My knees unfold. There is a sensation, not painful but there where it wasn’t before. I know I am changing position and I don’t straighten up the way I used to. It takes me a little while. Sometimes when I’m tired I catch myself dragging around like my grandmother used to. I am growing old like her, I think, then the memories come rushing in.
I learned how to sew at my grandmother’s sewing machine using a pink fabric printed with little white envelopes with heart seals. I would sit with her at her room’s back window looking over the rice fields behind our house. When it rained and Manila’s streets were flooded, so were the rice fields. People would traverse them in bancas. It was beautiful to watch them. I would kneel on the floor to surreptitiously watch as men killed a dog for them to eat. They beat the dog and hung it up by its hind legs.
Unforgettable, my childhood memories of happiness and disappointment in our old Sta. Mesa house, when it was ours, before the family feud, before Lola died, before everything, before I grew up and became what I am today – old, tired and ugly but nevertheless feeling fine, still finding things to laugh about, finally beginning to feel things again, slowly, after the stroke that alienated me from my feelings.
Last Saturday at the first Javier and Josefa Gonzalez reunion, I had a profound feeling moment that threatened to overwhelm me. The reunion was going well. I was seated, thrilled, with my grandmother’s relatives. It was the first time we had made a connection. Then they decided to show the presentation they had prepared. They had been showing it earlier but without music. In the afternoon, they presented it with music from the 1930s that gave it – for me, anyway – a special meaning.
A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you.
A woman sang this song while the youthful old photographs of my grandparents, uncles and aunts flashed on the screen. My heart cracked open and I wanted to sob, to weep over their tragedy. My throat tightened, tears leapt up. I could hardly breathe. Panicked, I told myself to get a grip. This was a party. Somehow that gave me pause and the pain sat in my chest heavily, like a rock in the center of a broken heart.
It sat there through the bonding and the picture taking, the party games and the delicious dirty ice cream. It sat there and probably led me to a misintroduction of Ryan Agoncillo and Juday. I introduced him as Roy and cannot explain even to myself where I got that name. I’m sorry. It sat there through the good-byes and see-you-soons. It is there still though it gets easier to carry every day. In a way I welcome the pain. It is real now, no longer an abstract idea in my head.
Getting old is not that bad. I survived a stroke. I live alone and am open to waves of wonderful memories of my own good times when the children were small and we were all so happy. Sometimes I am overcome by missing my little cuddly children, now getting old with their own little cuddly children.
Trining, our housekeeper for many years, passed away in Vancouver yesterday. Am I going to tell my mother who, afflicted with Alzheimer’s, probably won’t understand. I visit her regularly just to see how she is and to see where I might be going. Then I pray that I don’t follow her footsteps. Alone in my apartment, I often think my time on this earth is diminished with each passing day but so long as I am here, there is still laughter, mirth, joy, tossed in with sadness and memories and held together firmly with gratitude for being alive still.
I look at my mother and think – that’s where I’m going. Then I think of all the young ones reading this – you will get here, too. It’s not so bad, really.
In case you’re interested, there’s a lecture on Elderly Abuse today at the Janssen Hall, Christ the King Parish on E. Rodriguez Avenue, sponsored by Bantay Matanda. Rush over. You don’t want to be late.