Love heals, always

MANILA, Philippines - What is life without love; what am I without you?      — From Love Without Time

88 DAYS IN INDIA: A Pilgrimage

of Faith, Hope and Love

By Chet Espino

Marathon Publishing Company

Makati City, Philippines, 194 pages

Available at Powerbooks

When terrorists struck Mumbai, the news coming from India ’s capital was followed by the world. Little did a simple Filipino family know that the tragedy that gripped the world in those days of November 2008 would coincide with their own terror tale that had a twist so inspiring it must be written if only to remind all of us that in mayhem or merriment, the one true source of hope is love.

Chet Espino’s magnum opus, 88 Days in India: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Hope and Love, is a testament to how love transforms desolate hopelessness into a miracle of faith and fate. His book is not the mushy soup-for-the-soul variant though it offers spiritual enlightenment which while personal is divinely universal; nor is it an advice column that dishes out clichés and formulaic answers, for there is no common reply to the nagging question: Why me and why now? His is a direct, honest, and very human account of an experience no one would wish on even their worst foe.

His is an account that captures the roller coaster he rode in — for there are tears and a sense of foreboding, drudgery and dread, even the possibility of an untimely demise — the moment he was bothered by a call that informed him that Margie Quimpo-Espino, writer, wife and mother to their three children, “collapsed and was frothing in the mouth” — an episode that turned out to be an aneurysm — while she and her team were set to visit the ultimate ironic symbol of love, the Taj Mahal.

His is an adventure in incredible India, but made more so because, literally, while his wife’s life hung in the balance, he acknowledged that her destiny was not in his hands, but God’s. His is a love story within a story, and why, as in any tragic story, Deus ex machina (literally, “God from a machine”) emphasizes that in experiencing catharsis, there is the reward of redemption. According to Espino, “I write this book out of a conviction that the story of this special embrace from God is not just ours to keep… only through an understanding of what transpired behind the scenes (can) one have a plausible explanation of the many events that, from a purely human perspective, seemed impossible — from Margie’s miraculous recovery to the source of strength of someone so weak.”

As a writer, he used his skills to communicate, first to his children of the life-changing events that were fast unfolding miles away from the safety of their home. It is defining moments like these that all parents dread, a time when their children abruptly leave some of their innocence behind and are asked to step up to the plate to take a good swing at what life throws at their family. The years of being trained by Mom and Dad must now be tested. “I made hasty arrangements… but I had to leave the responsibility of caring for the household to Mark, who was 16 and very much unprepared for it.” Or so he thought, for the passage that says it all (pages 192-193) is of a family none the worse for the wear after the crisis while having learned a great many life lessons; and with Mark, smiling through it all, best summed up by Espino’s verdict: “I am proud of Margie’s kids!”

The volume was intended to be a daily updating of Margie’s condition. The updates were also intended to be sent to Chet and Margie’s circle of friends which, as the power of technology was harnessed, grew to an e-group, and later, to an expansive global prayer community, a veritable army of many people who with Espino stormed the heaven’s gate to allow her to be whole again; to be the wife and mother and sister and peer and friend again.

The gems emanating from Espino’s lore are plentiful. But nothing can beat the poignant letter of Mark to his mother, given to his father at the airport as he prepared to board his flight to India:

 “We need you in the house! Without you, there are no sweets here. Papa won’t give. You have to come home. We’re supposed to go through my college life together. Please come home, please. I’ll give anything to have another minute with you.

 “If I told you I gave all your bags would you come back? All your shoes? Please! There are many here waiting for you and praying.

 “It’s not yet time. We still need you. Papa needs his oh-so-beautiful-wife…Even one phone call would do. Just call us. I want to hear your voice again… I have so much more to say but that’s reserved for when you get home. For now, get well and come back home.”

The days rolled by as shifts in her conditions made peaks and valleys assume new meaning for Espino. Yet, at his ebb, even as he thought of things he could do to hasten her recovery, he also knew that his wife was on thin ice and borrowed time. He implored the brain experts and God — for a new lease on life. Then, as the pages leap with excitement and fear, he narrates the initially puny and then miraculous victories she scored as she valiantly took up a hard and tough fight.

While to the purist it may lack well-plotted drama — its simple narrative following the diary approach — this approach itself is dramatic. For the drama has been more than adequately provided by the “up one moment and down the next” turns that Espino records. Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, Philippine Daily Inquirer editor in chief, writes in her introduction of these medical highlights: “What jumps the reader in the updates is the amazing, unshakeable faith that held Chet together through Margie’s two episodes of brain hemorrhage due to aneurysm, two bouts with hydrocephalus, meningitis, a bedsore so deep it had to be taken out surgically and serious complications one after the other such as infections, off-and-on high fever, fluids in the brain, etc.”

Indeed, the trials of Chet and Margie Espino, as the book traces, mirror the plight of St. Joseph who had to take care of the expecting Mary in a strange land, and if it was not serendipity, the first Catholic church Espino went to near Fortis Escorts Hospital in Faridabad, Haryana, India where she was first rushed for medical intervention was St. Joseph Parish Church.

So as it began in the first week of Advent in 2008, it ended in the first week of Lent, that Chet’s love of Margie passed through fire, and survived. It was tested by circumstances, during which they never wavered nor faltered. Theirs is one love story that did not easily give up, and he offers the best proof: the two “8”s forming the total number of days they had to endure in India were really the symbol of infinity twice over. Indeed, true love heals, always!