I was going to post today, but since today was the 9th day after my mother’s death, we had a LOT of people over. I don’t know why it is that way, but Filipinos always have a big prayer fest and gathering on the 9th day after someone’s death. If someone out there knows why, please tell me. I’m too lazy to ask or look it up.

Anyway, my tiny house was PACKED with people. All the titas (aunts) and lolas (grandmothers) were in the living room and dining room, and all the titos (uncles) were in the kitchen. And my room became a cousin refugee camp, because there was no where else to go.

But the food was good. That’s all that matters. Even though I haven’t seen this many people in my house since Fatima’s graduation party, and maybe even longer than that!

We’ve had people at our house every day for the past 9 days, and tomorrow, it ends. We’re on our own after that. But I know we’ll be okay once we all go our separate ways. I’ll make sure to check in on my daddy and sister often.

Oh look, I said I wasn’t going to post, and here’s a post. Hmm. Funny.

Anyway, here’s the original intention of this post, this week’s Unconscious Mutterings.

1. Scrooge:: McDuck

2. Ribbon:: Pink
3. Physical:: Pain
4. Income:: Tax
5. Dream:: Sequence
6. Notebook:: Lines
7. Disney:: Quest
8. Combo:: Pizza
9. Booty:: Shakin’
10. Skin:: Tight

Tags: Weeklies by Yano
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Flowers on My Mother’s Gravesite

I heard the word in a reading today that they were using at my mother’s funeral, and it felt like it accurately described the way I was feeling. Today was a really hard day, since it was the funeral. It was hard to say one last goodbye to my mom as they closed the casket. It was hard to watch the pallbearers, my male cousins and Dave, carry the casket to the hearse.

At the church, when I was walking back to my pew after communion, I looked out to see who came to the mass, and was surprised and choked up to see the church filled. There were more people there than attend the regular Sunday mass at my church. When we came out, the parking lot was full of cars. Maui drove the car I was in, and the rest of the family drove in the car in front of us. We passed by the house, one last time. I was thinking to myself, “I wonder if Ewok (my dog) will be in the window to say goodbye….” but as the hearse approached, I didn’t see him. So then in the car in front of me, Fatima stuck out her head and yelled “Ewok!!!” and there he was, looking out in the window. I don’t know if he knew what was going on, but I was reassured knowing that he was there.

We headed to the cemetary, our caravan of cars. In the end, the number of cars in the procession totalled about 75 cars. I apologize to anyone that was caught in our traffic on Milwaukee Avenue. But it was great to see, so many people turning out for my mom. Being at the gravesite was so hard for us, it felt so final. A lot of things hit me then, how much I would miss my mom, and that this all was really happening. I didn’t even bother to stop the tears, I just let them flow. As I heard the cries of my aunts, the sighs and the cries to my mother being said as she was put into the ground, I thought how accurately their wails echoed the torment in my heart, how I wanted to cry out with them, “Mommy, I’ll miss you….I love you….” I just looked around me and felt saw such grief in the eyes of the people I loved, the sadness I felt was overwhelming.

So now is when we start to heal. I’m lucky, because we all get to do it together. We started already today, sharing funny stories and laughing a lot. We’ve all grown closer, thanks to Mommy, and she would have wanted it this way.

Tomorrow, happier thoughts. This blog is getting WAY too depressing, I know!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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We had the wake again today, and after the prayer service, each one of us said a few words about my mom. It was a definite tear-fest for everyone in the room. I even made the tough guys in the back cry. But it was so beautiful to hear my sister’s words about my mommy, and my cousins and aunt speak about her too. I could hardly get mine out in between sobs, but I got through it. The biggest shocker for us was when my dad got up there and spoke, and brought down the house with some funny recollections about him and my mom’s longaniza (filipino sausage) making days….We were so impressed - we had never seen our dad speak publicly before, and he was a natural, keeping it all together, and saying that seeing me and my sisters break down gave him the courage to get up there and speak without breakind down himself. It was a wonderful tribute to my mother.

So anyway, here’s mine. It’s pretty long, but if you’re a reader of my blog, you should know that I’m not one to use a few words for anything!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Well, it’s our first Thanksgiving without her. We’re doing ok, getting ready for our traditional Thanksgiving with the family so we’ve been busy all day. So things go ok until we stop moving, then we start to think. The motto me and my sisters have adopted today was ‘Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming!’ Keep moving and we won’t start getting all teary eyed. Except when we watch the Maury Povich ‘Best Tearjerking Episodes’ special.

Yesterday was pretty tough, having the first day of the wake. But it was so awesome to see the amount of people that turned out. We had two rooms and they were entirely filled, we even had people standing out in the hallways. It was definitely a full house. There were so many people that we knew that were there, and people we hadn’t seen in ages that came to pay their respects. A lot of our college friends from U of I came. With Maui being the oldest U of I there, and a freshman in the room, that’s 10 years of U of I people there. Marian even said, ‘It feels like a Ginseng party in here!’ I’m so thankful that so many of my old friends came, and even though I know that they didn’t know what to say, having them there was enough.

When my mom passed away, we all sat together and decided to have the wake on Wednesday and Friday. “If we have it on those days, then we can’t have a Thanksgiving party,” they told us kids. But then we realized that my mom would have wanted us to go on. “OK, we’ll have a get together, but we’ll keep it small and intimate. Just us.” We looked around, and that “us” was the same group that we always celebrate Thanksgiving with anyway - the same 30-ish people.

So we’re moving on, celebrating Thanksgiving, with our fried turkey and pot roast, just like always. But in the back of our minds we’re remembering a great woman that we miss a lot.

So today, I’m thankful for my family, I’m thankful for a husband who has been there for me, I’m thankful for my friends who have supported me, I’m thankful to have been blessed with a good life and to have a mother who loved me and taught me how to love.

And, on a related but separate note, I’m happy that I’m still the Tony Hawk MASTER. Readers may remember long ago that I have not yet met someone who can consistently beat me at Tony Hawk on PS2, and I was worried when my cousins told me that they play Tony Hawk’s Underground. I’ve never played it before, so I thought that I wouldn’t do as well. It’s still got the same button combinations, so I was able to whoop my cousin Marlon’s ass. Yeah. The girl’s still got it. Now I just have to play my cousin Jeff. He’s been a videogame freak since we were little, so he will be a formidable opponent. We’ll see what happens!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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We’re going through pictures for a collage that we’re making for the wake tomorrow (today actually). It’s so fun to relive all the memories and to see ourselves and our parents when they were young. I’ve found a couple albums that I’ve never seen before of when my mom first came to the US. It’s pretty incredible to imagine what she went through, coming to a new country, making a new start for herself, meeting all these other Filipinos that had just come over. Her and my aunts all looked so young. It’s hard to imagine her so young and carefree!

And I also saw some of my childhood photos. If I had a scanner here, I’d post up some old pictures of you that’ll keep you laughing well into the next century. I was NOT an attractive kid. I was pretty cross-eyed when I was born, which makes for a myriad of bad, funny pictures. When I got older, I had bug eyes, HUGE glasses and the ugliest haircuts imaginable. Not to mention my Michael Jackson-esque afro in fourth grade. Claudine and Fatima were ADORABLE kids. They just had the cutest faces all the time. Well, Claudine did have a couple with her eyes rolled behind her head. But me, I was just the one with the bad hair who never smiled with her teeth. It was neat, though, to see that my cousin Maui also had his share of bad haircuts and awful eyeglass frame choices.

But we all got a good laugh out of them. Maybe during Thankgiving I’ll go over to Melanie’s and scan some pics for y’all.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Me and my sisters sat in tears huddled around my laptop yesterday, on our slow-ass dialup (we’ve been trying to get Fata’s computer to connect to AOL DSL, but to no avail). We read all the comments that everyone made, looked at other people’s blogs, and read everyone’s wonderful emails. Thanks so much for the wonderful outpouring of support.

This poem on Chariya’s blog hit us especially hard, because it put into words a lot of what we’re going through….

Whew!

Here’s something to lighten things up.

Dave’s in Cali, couldn’t take time off.

So I’m twenty-something, staying at home, sleeping in a full bed with my 25 two twenty-something sisters. Isn’t that hilarious? We’re like little enchiladas in pan.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Filipinos are a really superstitious bunch. Our folklore is rich with stories of ghosts, goblins and giants. I remember when my grandmother died, there were whispers of many strange occurances after her death, and even I experienced something strange.

So when my mother passed away, I was waiting for something to happen. I think we all were. And, in a way, something did. You can chalk it up to coincidence, you can say it’s paranoia, you can say we’re making these things more than they are, but all in all, it makes for a pretty good story. Well, a couple good stories.

- When we got home from the hospital, the phone rang. I looked at Claudine and said, ‘Here we go…’, referring to the onslaught of phone calls that we would be getting. I picked up the phone, and no answer. Since then, we’ve gotten about 6 calls a day that were just hang-ups.

- At around 3 in the morning for the last couple days (since my mom’s death), my mother’s brother would get phone calls. His wife, who was very close to my mom would pick it up and there would be no one on the other end of the line. But in the background she could hear the sounds of a hospital (my aunt works in a hospital). Caller ID would say ‘unknown number’.

- My godfather had come home to call my cousin (his daughter) in Brazil to tell her the news. After a tearful goodbye, he got up to go back to my house. As he was almost out the door, the phone rang again. He picked it up and said, ‘Hello’. There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. He said ‘Hello’ again, and on the other end of the line he heard a quiet, scratchy, ‘Hello? Hello?’ The voice to him was an all too familiar voice - my mom’s. He knew that because my mom’s voice was unmistakable - her vocal cords were damaged so she had this faint scratchy quality to her voice that made it difficult for her to talk. He went immediately back to the house and told the story, shaking and definitely spooked.

- Before she passed away, my father took off my mom’s glasses, wrapped them in a paper towel and stuck it in his pocket. After she passed, when we came home, my father was putting all my mom’s things together. He couldn’t find the glasses. We looked all around, asked everyone, but no one knew where it was. The next day, we were about to eat lunch. We heard the doorbell. My dad and my sisters went to see who it was, but there was no one there. We then ate lunch. After lunch, Claudine went to Ewok’s box to get his food. She saw something wrapped in a paper towel in the box where we keep his food and toys. She pulled it out, and there were my mom’s glasses. No one put them there, and Ewok isn’t tall enough to reach the box.

- As I said, we have people over all the time. Sunday night, the family came over again. Fatima went into the bathroom. She came out, and asked my dad, ‘Who put Mommy’s toothbrush on the sink?’ He didn’t know. He asked around. Her toothbrush had been kept in a plastic bag with the rest of her belongings, which were in my dad’s bedroom. There was no explanation for how the toothbrush got onto the sink. Claudine had cleaned out the bathroom earlier that day and never saw it.

- Remember my cousin Marilyn - the one who saw ghosts when she was a kid? Well, after we got home from the hospital, we were so physically and emotionally exhausted that many of us took a group map in the living room of my house. When Marilyn woke up, she came up to me and Fatima and asked, ‘Do you still have the jewelry box in the basement?’ Fatima said yes. Marilyn then told us that she had a dream where she was talking to my mother, and my mother took her to the jewelry box. When Marilyn was little, she loved a pair of earrings that were in that box, and the matching ring. My mother gave her the earrings, but said that the ring was too big to fit her, but when she got older she could have it. Marilyn had forgotten about it, but was reminded in her dream. In the dream, my mother said that she could have the ring now, because it fits her. Marilyn and Fatima went down to the basement and looked at the jewelry box. No ring. Marilyn was relieved. Then Fatima mentioned that my mom had an identical jewelry box in her bedroom. She took Marilyn up to my mom’s room and opened the jewelry box. They opened the ring drawer, and there was the ring, right on top. Marilyn has officially been renamed ‘Creepy Cousin Marilyn’.

- I’ve always been superstitious about the third day after someone’s death. I think that’s because my aunts and uncles always told stories of weird things happening on the third day - just like how Jesus rose on the third day. It’s a Filipino thing, I guess. Anyway, I was at work yesterday, and I was thinking, ‘This is the third day…wonder if anything is going to happen.’ But to me, nothing did. But when I got home, Claudine told Fatima to tell me her story. Fatima had gone out to lunch with a friend, while the rest of the family was shopping for supplies. She came home at around 11am, and as she was unlocking the door, she could hear the answering machine going off. Once she came in, all she heard was classical music coming out of the answering machine. She thought that it was someone who put the phone on hold and went around the house putting things away, waiting for someone to speak. But no one ever did. The music went on for about 3 minutes before Fatima picked up the phone and said ‘Hello’. And the music kept on going on. Creeped out, Fatima hung up the phone. When she told me that story, I realized that at 11am that morning was almost exactly 3 days after my mom died.

Kinda sends shivers up your spine, no? They’re just stories and coincidences, I know, but even though it’s a little creepy, it’s nice to know that maybe, just maybe, my mom is sending us little signals from beyond.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Just something to start bring this blog back to its normal state, and to take my mind off things…

The Friday Five
(Known today as the Tuesday Five)

1. List five things you’d like to accomplish by the end of the year.
1) Learn how to cook at least 10 dishes well
2) Finish up all the pages on my site
3) Get a desk
4) Go to the health club more than once a month
5) Pick up enough miles to fly to Europe first class

2. List five people you’ve lost contact with that you’d like to hear from again.
All the people I was friends with in high school

3. List five things you’d like to learn how to do.
1) Play the guitar
2) Ice skate
3) Cook
4) Speak Japanese, French and Tagalog
5) Drive stick

4. List five things you’d do if you won the lottery (no limit).
1) Pay off my sisters’ and Dave’s school debts
2) Fly around the world
3) Buy a kick ass house with a pool, tennis courts, bowling alley and personal movie theater, hell, if there’s no limit, I’ll buy the whole freakin’ neighborhood so all my cousins and friends can live there, too
4) Give a fat wad to charities, like the American Cancer Society, Gilda’s Club, Make a Wish, Ronald McDonald House, ACTOR: A Commitment to Our Roots and Gallery37
5) Go into space. I just wanna see the view.

5. List five things you do that help you relax.
1) Sleep
2) Playstation
3) Work on my page
4) Take pictures/Modify Pictures
5) Watch TV

Unconscious Mutterings

Concert::Symphony
Sydney::Australia
Shower::Wedding
Patterns::Sewing
Market::Street
Chair::Desk
London::England
Reception::Wedding
Republican::Party
Cough::Drops

more later today….

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Thank you so much to everyone for their comments below, emails, cards and phone calls. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful and caring internet family. Through this all, you have given me so much support, and I’m so thankful for all of your kind words. You don’t know how much it means to me and my family.

First things first, here’s all the information about the funeral arrangements:

You know, it’s so strange to have to go and make funeral arrangements. Luckily for us, my mother had talked it over with my father and Fatima and made most of the arrangements herself, so we were just left to telling the funeral director the things on my mother’s list. I don’t know how she could have done it, from picking out the type of coffin to deciding what she wanted to wear, to when she wanted the funeral to be. When we came to a decision that she didn’t make, like what to put on the prayer cards, we were lost.

The last couple days have been a daze for me. My family is doing pretty well, though you can see that beneath the surface of smiles and ‘Thank you, we’re getting along okay’, we’re barely holding it together. I’m constantly on the brink of crying, and anything can set off the flow of tears, which I have mastered the art of stopping before they actually fall. My life has been a series of ‘firsts’. The first time we came home after the hospital, knowing she would never come home again. Our first night without her. The first time we went to church without her. Thanksgiving. Christmas, and our annual family picture. Things that will never be the same for us.

Through all this, I am thankful for our family and friends, who have been at our sides all the time. Our house is constantly full of people, our phone rings off the hook. They help us to remember her by telling stories of my mom’s life, and it makes the pain a little less. We’ve cried a little, we’ve laughed a lot, which is how she would have wanted it. It’s great to be surrounded by love.

I guess the hardest time is at night, when everyone goes home, when we’re just left on our own. That’s the time that your mind really starts dwelling on it and thinking too much, the pain comes back and you start to feel how much of a part of your life is gone. Sure, she’s definitely in a better place, but here on earth, there is a hole in our lives that she has left. She’s still in our hearts, but we have to get used to the fact that she’s no longer in our lives.

I hope that my mother’s Heaven is a good place. Because, it’s a given that she’s in Heaven, there is no one else I know who deserves to be there than her. And I hope that in her Heaven she can see us, and feel the love and loss that we feel in her passing. That Heaven is filled with the things that she loves most - the love of her family and friends surrounding her, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ playing all the time, the Bulls still being a Championship team, 50% off clearance prices at the stores, pantyhose that never runs, broadway musicials, food so good that she forgets her name, the smell of roses, and peace. She’s looking down on us, I can feel it, and I know she’s smiling.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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My mother passed away at around 11am yesterday, November 22nd.

I got the call on Thursday. Claudine called me while I was working, and said, “I’m sorry for calling you at work, but Daddy wants you to call him at the hospital.” My heart sank. I called the hospital. My father’s voice was very controlled as he spoke to me. “Christine, can you come home tonight?”

Now the last time I went home, my father had called, and I had asked him if I needed to go home, and he said it was my decision. This time, I didn’t have to ask. I knew that I had to go home.

He explained little of what was going on, other than he didn’t know if she was going to last the night and to come home as soon as possible.

I left work and started the 3 hour drive home. I called my sister and she told me to be careful driving home. I couldn’t control the tears from flowing as I drove home in heavy traffic. I would be blotting one eye and keeping the other on the road, then switching. My body was racked with sobs and I came to terms with what was going to happen. I prayed that my mom would wait until me and Claudine came home. A million thoughts raced through my head. The first ones were selfish, my mom wouldn’t see her first grandchild, she wouldn’t see Claudine or Fatima get married, never see Claudine graduate from med school, or me and Dave get our first house. I thought of how my life would be without my mom, how my whole family’s life would be. Thanksgiving, Christmas, even just coming home and knowing that she won’t be there. It tore me apart. Over the last few months I’ve been coming to terms with the reality that my mother would be passing away, but it really hit me then. Then I realized what a full life she had led, raising three daughters that were good children, having a loving husband who stood by her through thick and thin, having a loving, supporting group of family and friends that have been with her and praying for her throughout this whole ordeal. I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. As soon as I would get it under control, I would start thinking again, and the sobs would come right back.

Luckily, I got a flight home later that night that would bring me into Chicago early in the morning. Claudine was also lucky enough to get an early flight out of Des Moines. We came home on Friday morning, and went to the hospital.

It was hard to go back to the hospital. When I had left before, she had been doing so well, she was getting so strong, she was even going to go home. But then she had some complications and her condition worsened. She was happy to see me and Claudine again. We stayed with her most of Friday, and had a flurry of family come and visit. We knew the end was close, and so did she. Since she was on a respirator and her lungs were in such bad condition, she was unable to speak, so we were left to try reading her lips, which was frustrating on both sides. We said what we needed to say to her, not knowing when she would be conscious again or how much time was left, and she talked to each one of us, including my cousins and my aunts. There were many tears shed, but it was beautiful to see how many people’s lives she had touched.

Me and my sisters went home to get some rest, and our cousins came to be with us. It felt good to all be together. In the morning, we left early to the hospital to say goodbye. We stayed in the room, as more and more people came in to be with my mom in her last moments. She was surrounded by family and friends. There were about 30 people in the room when my mother passed on, and when the moment happened, the room filled with tears. Everyone grieved in their own way, some having silent tears fall down their cheeks, some turning to hide their tears, some sobbing so hard they could not breathe. My heart was broken a thousand times watching it all, most of all my father, trying to be strong for all of us. I tried to be strong, but during the last moments, just seeing the emotions produced by everyone else, and when she finally breathed her last, I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I held her hand, and I never wanted to let go of it, thinking that by holding on I could still keep her with me. We all hugged each other and we cried together, mourning the passing of a woman we had all come to love.

My mommy wasn’t only a mother to just me and my sisters. Ever read the book ‘The Joy Luck Club’? I don’t have just one mother, I’ve got several. Five families bringing up their children together. So my mom didn’t leave behind 3 children, she left behind all my cousins (well, pseudo cousins), too. And all her best friends were like sisters to her. Women that she met when she came to this country, more than 30 years ago, who she has shared so many of life’s events with, raised her children with, and yes, even playing mah-jong at every family party with. This is the first time that any of our families have experienced something like this, so they all took it hard. She was loved by so many, she had touched so many lives, and she herself had led a good, full life filled with love and laughter.

So now, it’s all over. Her pain, her struggle, the difficult fight against cancer and everything related, it’s the end. And in the end, she still never thought of herself. She said that with her passing, my dad would now be able to rest (he has stayed by her side through all of this). She asked my uncles to take care of my father. She asked Dave to take care of me. She asked my aunts to take care of my sisters. She made sure that my little cousin ‘is a good girl’ and finishes highschool, and she told my other cousin to go back and finish college no matter what. She made each and every one of us know that she loved us and will continue to love us. She was actually comforting those of us that couldn’t bear to see her in this condition. Her strength and courage was incredible, the way she lived life was something to learn from. I could only hope to be even half the woman my mother was, to be loved the way she was loved by her husband, children, family and friends.

So goodbye Mommy. We all love you. We’re all doing OK, we’re all together, and we’re taking care of each other, just like you wanted. We miss you so much already. Our lives won’t be the same without you.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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