A rainy day. Aubrey and her schoolmates were sent home after lunch due to the storm in the north. L. delivered the additional 75 sacks of garden soil that we need for our plant boxes. Three of M.'s men and two of D.'s boys assisted me. I worked only whenever the rain stopped. Later in the afternoon the men and the boys decided to take off their shirts and continue working in the pouring rain, Done in three hours--but, we need 30 more sacks of garden soil!
Angelique went to the hospital to affix her signature on papers needed to obtain Ivy's death certificate. Ivy's relatives then had the cadaver transported to Masantol, Pampanga, where it was embalmed and coffined for the wake.
J. arrived to send the night with Angelique and Aubrey. We ordered pizza. They plated cards the whole night. I must have played two or three Hercule Poirot DVDs before turning in. My TV was tuned to CNN Absolutely through dawn.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
The alarm woke me at 4:00 AM. The goddess of the storm is my mother, Not a drop of rain and, in a few hours, the sun would be scorching hot. We fed and watered Cerefina, Kichiro, and the birds before locking up. The car we rented arrived 4:30. We left Cubao at 5:15 and had a substantial breakfast at the Petron stop on the NLEx. Our route brought us through Tabang Exit to Malolos and Calumpit, and then Apalit, Macabebe, and Masantol, We saw the mortuary early on but drove round the plaza in search of a hotel. Deja vu: It is the same mortuary where my former co-worker Teen had held father's funeral wake a few years ago.
As it turned out, there are no hotels in Masantol because it is considered a dead end that looks out onto Manila Bay. There are no hotels in San Nicolas and Macabebe either. We stopped briefly at the mortuary. Ivy's and M.'s relations were there. They did an excellent job of dressing up Ivy in an embroidered, formal gown, and having her hair and make-up done. We were the first to sign the guest book.
The closest hotel we found was in Apalit. I paid for two adjoining rooms with a connecting door in between. After taking in our bags we stopped for ice cream in the town plaza, bought sacks of snack food, and went back to the hotel. I read a few pages from a book and napped. My granddaughters and J. slept through 1:00 PM.
Lunch was at a fast food store a few meters away. We took out sandwiches for the group's supper just in case they wouldn't like the food that would be served inside the chapel. I told my granddaughters and J. to be back in the hotel by midnight so that they could have sufficient sleep before the funeral the following morning,
Everyone else proceeded to the mortuary. I asked to be dropped at the boundary between Apalit and Macabebe. A stretch of santo shops were located there. I almost bought myself two carved, wooden, santo heads, but refrained from doing so. Deja vu again; While waiting for a tricycle by the roadside a man on a delivery bike stopped in front of me and asked whether our cafe in Cubao was now completely done. I had to do a double take before recognizing him as one of B.'s men who worked on our iron grilles. I informed him that Ivy had passed away, which was why I was in Apalit. He was utterly shocked. A tricycle pulled up before I decided that I could use him to do some more iron work for us. I sensed, however, that we would cross paths again someday.
Back at the hotel I did some reading and writing. Tomorrow morning would be the next time I'd be back at the mortuary, before the funeral. The goddess of the storm is also the goddess of cemeteries. I am prohibited from going to places of death as much as possible. I knitted the rest of the afternoon, downed a Gatorade and a Nestea, and ate a hotel supper alone.
The granddaughters and J. came to the hotel unexpectedly early that night. The mortuary was crowded and filled with many of Ivy's relatives, most of whom my granddaughters hadn't met till then. Angelique's schoolmates were scheduled to arrive at the mortuary after midnight, and so they decided to nap through 10:00 PM, go back to the mortuary, and stay there through the morning. At 9:00 PM my sisters Remi and Alice, R., Alice's house companion, and E., a compound tenant, were already en route from Cubao to Pampanga. They asked Angelique, on her cell phone, to book an additional two hotel rooms for them. I slept early and woke up briefly at dawn only to find out that my granddaughters, J., and the driver went back to the mortuary at 1:00 AM and that my sisters and their company had gone to the mortuary before check into the rooms beside ours.
Deja vu: I recall conducting a "Writing from The Heart" workshop here a few years back.
After breakfast at the hotel we all met up at the mortuary. Mass was celebrated and was followed by a ritual blessing. Do I really look too weird? I lined up to kiss the priest's hand before he left, and he asked me, "Kamag-anak ka ba?" The funeral hearse, waiting outside the chapel, turned on its music. Flowers and balloons were placed on top of it. My granddaughters followed the coffin through the time it was taken inside the hears. It was then that I saw them truly overcome with grief--this was the first death in their immediate family. They walked behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery, along with J. and some 50 relatives and friends, some of whom had traveled all the way from Manila to pay their last respects.
It was at this time that Ivy must have pulled a prank on everyone: the rain poured as though on cue, and everyone had no choice but to patiently trudge through the flooded streets to the cemetery. After the funeral my granddaughters changed into shorts and took off their shoes. We checked out of the hotel at 11:00 PM. Pending my checking out other hotels in Apalit this is, tentatively, where we shall book our rooms every year to visit Ivy's grave.
Our trip home was uneventful. All of the heavy traffic was northbound, on the other side of every road we passed.
We all had a late lunch at Cafe Adriatico in Gateway before proceeding home.
Fredo's tricycle. I didn't recognize him quickly; he now has a wife and child. When he was 16 he was one of the staff members of Miranda's Cove, our family cafe.
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