Memories of my Angela

They say it is abnormal, illogical, and unrealistic for a parent to outlive his child. It is all that, but it happens. It happened to me last October 30 in Freehold, New Jersey. That was the day my eldest, Angela Haya Hernandez Reyes Iglesia, breathed her last.

First, there was a long distance call from her sister Rhea, telling me that I had to leave immediately for the United States because her Ate Gigi was seriously ill. To my everlasting regret, I dallied.

There was the National Press Club’s 53rd anniversary celebration to attend to since NPC president Antonio Antonio was out of the country; there were travel arrangements to be made, things to be bought, the natural juice, Biozyme, touted to be a cure for cancer, to be packed.

In my last telephone conversation (which was actually a monologue since she was too weak to reply), I had asked Gigi to be strong, to wait for me for I would be bringing her strong "medicine" that would make her well.

I left on Sunday evening, October 30, at 10 p.m. (10 a.m. East Coast time). The PAL plane I was on landed at the San Francisco International Airport at around 7:20 p.m. and I had a two-hour layover until my flight out to Newark, New Jersey. In San Francisco, a welcoming party of four led by my sister Carmen awaited me – and bad news, relayed through a phone call from Gigi’s dad, Bernardino Reyes Jr. (aka Karim Kiram), informing me that my angel, my Gigi, was gone.

Numbed by the news, the tears came, as the reality of Gigi’s death hit me. I was too late, too late to hug her as she had wished me to, too late to hold her in my arms and whisper comforting words, too late for my promised cure.

Earlier, on the plane from Manila, I had met a Filipina entrepreneur, Faye Alfaro Celones, who was on her way to visit her daughter on the West Coast. I, on the other hand, would be visiting my daughter, but in tragic circumstances. At the time, I was looking forward, with some misgivings, to seeing my gravely ill Gigi, still hopeful that the miracle I had prayed for throughout her illness, even when we thought her cancer had had a remission, would make her well.

"Nothing is impossible with God," I told Faye, even as an unwelcome thought arose: "What if I was too late?"

The stranger beside me who, I found out, knew friends of mine in the Philippines, made the flight to the City by the Bay seem shorter. Her best friend, she informed me, whose breast cancer had spread to her liver, was living proof of the skill of an oncologist, who practiced medicine in Irvine, CA. She would call me once I reached New Jersey, to tell me where this miracle worker could be contacted.

As it turned out, I would not be needing her doctor. Death, that thief who came unexpectedly in the night, had robbed me of the chance to see my daughter alive. Two hours before my plane hit land in San Francisco, Gigi had gone home to her Maker, without bidding me goodbye.

Should have. Would have. Could have.

What a world of difference it would have made if I had left days earlier to be at Gigi’s side. Would her life have been prolonged if the attending physician at Jersey Shore Medical Center hadn’t mistakenly punctured both sides of her neck to insert a tube that would flush water out of her lungs? Could Gigi have welcomed me had she not been made to undergo chemotherapy a few days before she expired?

Days before, Gigi had told her dear friend Lorna that she would never have chemotherapy done to her while she was in such a weakened condition. Mysteriously, while not a member of Gigi’s family was looking, someone had ordered the chemotherapy, despite the knowledge that Gigi had little time left to live.

All along, in the three years that she suffered from breast cancer, until her last four days on earth, Gigi had told friends and family: "I’m going to beat this!" She had refused to accept negative thoughts, insisting that there should be no crying. She continued to pray fervently to God, invoking the intercession of the Blessed Mother and all the saints in heaven for time to watch her daughters grow.

Her own two angels – Angelica and Alexandra – were the sunshine of her life. She doted on them, loved every moment spent with them. She planned their activities, their education, their birthday parties – to the minutest detail. Nothing was to be denied them, if she had her way.

Four years ago, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center on 9/11/01, it was the beginning of the end for Gigi. She had gone to work that morning in the building across the WTC and had rushed down from the 23rd floor onto the street with her officemates, running for dear life from the WTC area, the ashes and debris falling on her.

Her first thoughts were of her children as she hurried home. What was to become of them, she worried, if something were to happen to her? It took all of 10 hours for her to get to the safety of her suburban home, where she hastily plunged into the water, which turned black.

How she wept with relief as she held her little ones, two and three years old, close to her chest. She thanked God profusely for sparing her. A year later, almost to the day, she discovered a lump in her breast. (Angela’s experience came out in an article in the Philippine Star written by Ching Alano on September 23, 2001.)

I remember the curly-haired, bedimpled Gigi, growing up, the oldest of eight children, maturing before her time by force of circumstance. She was the "little mother" to her four sisters and three brothers, who disciplined them when we, her parents, went off to work.

An above average student throughout her elementary and high school days at St. Theresa’s, Quezon City, and Victoria School Foundation, founded by her maternal grandfather, Jose M. Hernandez, she went on to take up Industrial Engineering at the University of the Philippines. After a brief stint at the NFA, then under family friend Jess Tanchanco, she honed her computer programming skills at the DBP Data Center before seeking her fortune in the United States, where in 1986 a job awaited her.

It was there that she met and later married Robert Iglesia, born in Maryland of Filipino parents with roots in Quezon province.

Arriving at Newark International Airport on October 31, I was met by my oldest son Sean who held out an overcoat for me to protect me from the chilly weather. In all my previous visits to Gigi, either she, her husband Bob or other brother Birdie, would be waiting for me, long coat slung over one arm. Gigi’s thoughtfulness knew no bounds.

My first stop, after unloading my luggage, was the funeral parlor where Gigi’s remains lay. Seeing her lying so still yet so lifelike, the tears welled in my eyes. I wept for the lost time I could have spent with her, for her daughters who would nevermore be cuddled in her arms, for all of us who had lost an incomparable daughter and friend.

On November 1 and 2, the two days (9-11 a.m., 2-4 p.m.) allotted for sympathizers to view her remains, the number of people who came was overwhelming. They stood in line, former officemates, colleagues in the profession (she was vice president of Deutsche Bank, Manhattan at the time of her death), neighbors, her daughters’ teachers, golf mates, cousins, aunts, and friends, for a look at the Gigi they had known and loved.

On November 3, we gathered for the last time to bid our final farewell to Gigi before the casket was to be sealed and brought to the St. Robert Bellarmine Church.

Pallbearers, including her husband and her three brothers, accompanied the casket into the church, where a surprisingly large crowd awaited the entourage.

Gigi’s sisters Cara, Rhea, Aisha, and Yasmin, her nephew Matthew, her dad and I sat at a front pew, trying to control our tears. When Birdie stood up to pay tribute to his Ate, and as the casket was drawn away, we failed to do so.

Rhea, especially, who had been one of the last to see and talk to Gigi alive, who had been so self-contained throughout the funeral preparations, and whom Gigi had tasked to take care of things, sobbed her heart out as if her heart would break.

In accordance with Gigi’s wishes, her remains were cremated and placed in an urn which we brought to the Gates of Heaven Mausoluem the next day.

We had started novena prayers for Gigi in New Jersey, but as we were going our separate ways to California, Michigan, and Poland, we continued the novena wherever we happened to be. The novena ended on November 8, and on November 9, I flew home to the Philippines.

I have no doubt whatsoever that my Gigi is in a safer, better place than this cruel world, for aside from being the wonderful, God-fearing church-going, lovable and loving person that she was, she had received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction thrice.

It is for us, who have lost her, that I continue to grieve and will always grieve, for she left an irreplaceable void in our lives.

How does a parent who has outlived her child cope? How does a mother cease to be always on the verge of tears at the thought of her lost child? I wish I knew. I can only go on living one day at a time, as Gigi would have wanted me to, remembering her courage in the face of imminent death, her indomitable spirit, the thousand and one expressions of love that she manifested in big and little ways.

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Mass on the occasion of the 40th day after Angela Iglesia’s death will be offered by Rev. James B. Reuter SJ on Friday, December 9, at 3 p.m. at the National Press Club.