A Not So Mundane Day

Thought of writing about my day just to see if it's indeed a bore. Here it goes:

6 am

No. I did not wake up at this hour. I was just about to sleep. Yes. You read it right. And I repeat: I was just about to sleep. The night before, I slept at 7 pm. I woke up at 11 pm to see if dad was already asleep and as expected, not yet. Belen, our help, and Vincent, my cousin, were already very exhausted so I had them go to sleep while I took over in monitoring dad.

10:45 am

Hubby's call woke me up. Or was it his call? Whatever caused me to jump out of bed had nothing to do with the  Oscars being aired "live" (duh... "live" in the Philippines's local channels means delays of an hour or more unless it's a "pay per view" thing that one's subscribed to).

11 am

Channel surfed before going down. Got to see the last few minutes of "Father of the Bride" on FOX Family Movies.

11:30 am

Finally went down. Switched on the laptop. Browsed my online source of everyday gossip (Facebook). Was told by Tito Jovy that Kuya Jun Jun, my second oldest cousin, suffered from stroke. Half of his body's now paralyzed.

12 pm

Had my brunch. Been doing this for the last month and a half. My body clock's completely screwed up. I've been out of the call center industry for more than a year already and yet I feel as though I'm still on a graveyard shift each time dad's restless.

1 pm

Took a shower. Broke my loofah handle. It's still new! Argh.

3 pm

Learned that the Tiendesitas bazaar application of Joy (not my sister... lol) was approved! Good for her! She's truly come a long way ever since the night I hauled my fancy jewelry-making tools with me and met up with her at Vinzon's Hall in UP Diliman :)

5 pm

Tita Tessie's arrival temporarily ended my Cityville addiction for the day. She arrived to pick up the photocopy of my dad's birth certificate. The certificate had arrived earlier via mail. Ah... The benefits of modern technology. No more having to go all the way to the National Statistics Office on East Avenue to line up for a copy of one's birth or marriage certificate. I just need to order online, pay at the bank and wait for two working days.

5:30 pm

Went to church. Walked with my phone's app "Step Counter", well, counting every step I took. Modern technology had enabled me to do away with a costly pedometer purchase. It was more or less 700 steps from our condominium unit to the Our Lady of Fatima Church on Kanlaon Street.

6 pm

Mass started. Celebrant was this Indian priest.

6:30 pm

Went to confession after mass. I was guilty of going to Monday masses instead of the Sunday ones, among other sins. At the end of the confession, I was asked if I knew the Act of Contrition. I said "yes" without thinking what the question meant until it dawned on me: Dang! Another sin. Liar. Liar. Good thing I knew right away (and was able to say to the priest) that what I honestly meant was that I know the prayer but I haven't mastered it. Yet. And to think this was after 15 years of being made to memorize such at the Catholic school I attended in third grade. Father was forgiving. Note that I'm referring here to both the Ultimate Priest up there and his human representative. I was told to pray the Act of Contrition once I'm home as part of my penance. I did not wait, however, for said time to pray it. I knew there's a prayer book inside the adoration chapel so off I went for my penance, my repentance for everything.

6:54 pm

Clocked in at the gym. Spent the next two hours there. Covered 3+ miles in 50 minutes.

9:30 pm

The pizza delivery guy arrived. We were expecting visitors. What I was not expecting was how the calories I burned went back. Rrrrrrrr..............

9:45 pm

Dad's cousins arrived. These were cousins of his that I had not seen in over five years. With them were my second cousins, Kuya Jerry and Ate Shiela. The last time I remember seeing Kuya Jerry was during his wedding in 1988! I was a flower girl at his wedding. Now he's looking at a framed picture of my own wedding.

10:15 pm

I have this secret skill of smiling and conversing at people I'm supposed to know (but just can't place the name and sometimes the face that goes with the name). Said skill failed me, BIG time, when Tita Susan dictated to me her address in Los Angeles. Take note: I asked for her address without knowing she's Tita Susan so when she began dictating with "24 Susan Romero 2410 South Pepperdale.........", I had to clarify if "Susan Romero" were a street with "24" as her house number. The rest of the humiliation followed....... Ugh.

10:45 pm

Sergs called to inform me that he's already about to go to the office. Uh-oh. Good thing hubby can wake up on time. I completely lost track of time, yet again, and never got to wake him up.

11 pm

Their visit ended with litanies of how and why I should lose weight, etc. That I was beautiful BUT THAT I still needed to lose weight. The sting wasn't so bad because they said I looked like my mom on my wedding day and only because I've learned to accept my fate of having to go to the gym to look better (as of this writing, I've already lost 16 lbs).

11:15 pm

Dad wanted to eat. Again. Only to fall asleep while eating.

12:07 am

I am about to end this blog.

_________

Most of the stuff here involves what I usually do while waiting for the approval of my spouse petition. The only difference is that this day's somehow peppered with curios enough for me to say it's at least not so mundane. God truly has His own unique humor. How we react to it remains the basis of the level of boredom or creativity in our lives.

On this day...

... I learned from my husband that his petition application for me was finally approved!

... we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the EDSA People Power.

... 25 years ago, I was in EDSA, a toddler on my dad's shoulders.

... I pledge that even if I am to leave for the US in a few months to finally be with my husband, I will never ever forget that I AM A FILIPINO.

With these statements I leave not the original music video of APO's "Hando ng Pilipino sa Mundo" but a music-picture compilation with the same song featuring the Philippines, 25 years after EDSA 1 (kudos to washingtonjaro's efforts).

How screwed up is this situation?!

One of the highlights of my altercation with my eldest half sister is when she told me to be humble.

Eh?

As far as I'm concerned (and everyone else I know), being humble means recognizing you need help and asking for it.

Humility Check List #1: Asking For Help  -  CHECK

I have. I did.

But it (once a week visits to dad to help me help him) is something they can't give or more appropriately, REFUSE to give.

And now I'm the one who is NOT humble?!

Heartbreaking...

... was the only word I could use to describe how I felt when I left UP Diliman last night. Amidst all the revelries brought about by being with friends at the UP Fair and listening to Parokya ni Edgar and Kamikazee, I still couldn't help but feel that pang deep within me.

Karen May Abu, a high school schoolmate, a year my senior, met me last night at the Faculty Center. She looked great  -  hard to believe she endured seven years of End Stage Renal Failure, something my dad still continues to fight. She had her successful kidney transplant two years ago and is now back in school, facing life as though she's taking the bull by the horn. But with grace.

She told me of how it felt to be a dialysis patient. She said everyday's a struggle. She spoke of daily confrontations with herself  -  if she wanted to still fight the fight or to succumb.

According to Karen, it's really of no joke to undergo everything that comes with having renal failure. She went through it all  -  hyponatremia (low sodium), really high creatinine, hypoglycemia, etc. She had had moments of confusion, irritability, depression and disorientation to the point that she would already beg that God take her. If only someone could read my thought bubble that time, that person would see nothing but pure horrified astonishment  -  as though someone pulled my heart and put a dagger in it.

Somehow, part of my point of view is full of bile. I can't help it. Sure what Karen went through and what dad goes through is not a joke. The suffering he faces everyday is apparently that enormous that it's unfair to even speak of what we, his kin, experience. His last cataract operation was postponed indefinitely. There's still indecision over whether dad can have a transplant which is primarily brought about by his complications and partly by how expensive it is (Karen told me that post-transplant, she spends P1-3K/day for medicine which puts to shame dad's P15-17K/monthly medication expense). It's not a joke. Really. It's life's sarcasm.

I know that with the paragraph above I'd encounter advice after advice on how I should not see life in that manner; that I should count this experience as a blessing, etc. But please tell me, how can I? How can I not feel bitter each time I see what renal failure has taken away from my dad? Never mind its effects on my life (why each "Precious's Day/Night Out" is full of guilt that Precious would rather not go out at all).

As I write this, dad's currently insisting he's not at home. He's complaining of lack of food when, just minutes ago, I gave him shrimp siomai. Thirty minutes ago, he bemoaned his lack of money (when I give him money  -  for psychological purposes).

Heartbreaking... and I'm running out of patience. Please Father God, another delivery of mercy is what I need to help dad endure it all.

When Secretary Angelo Reyes took his life away

If it were not for what happened to former Defense/DILG/DOE Secretary Angelo Reyes, I would not remember that the Catholic Church condemns acts of suicide to the point that it refuses to give final blessings to the deceased. Which is why its recent move to actually allow a Catholic burial for the controversial AFP chief spurred both positive and negative reactions among the opinionated masses it stirred.

The Philippine Star writes: "Tagbilaran Bishop Leonardo Medroso, CBCP-Episcopal Commission on Canon chairman, said that despite Reyes taking his own life, which is a a mortal sin, the ex-military official was not in the right frame of mind during that time."

I agree. But not entirely.

The decision of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), and of the entire Catholic Church itself, is a welcome change. It just shows how the Modern Church is slowly making progress towards the adoption of a universal acceptance of what is right and what is wrong. It is clearly doing away from ancient and narcissistic beliefs that it's the be-all and end-all of goodness and evil.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Catholic and I fear God. It's just my God-given skill of questioning, comparing and analyzing history does not lay in some state of passive obedience and nonchalance. And history, even science  -  the Church's "frenemy", has always showed us our tendency to misinterpret ideas (remember when Galileo was excommunicated for stating that the earth moves around the sun, thus falsifying then long-standing Church beliefs?).

A couple of days after the news of Reyes's suicide broke, I found myself in a state of dismay over having read and recognized that there would have been an opportunity to save the man's life if only his family members had known that he's suffering from depression. The article I read states that General Reyes, a few days before he shot himself, had requested that his family stay close to him and keep him company as he might inflict harm on himself if he were left alone.

Realization that such statement screams of depression symptoms (my dad is currently being treated for major depression), I immediately sought confirmation from my father's psychiatrist, Dr. Reynaldo Lesaca Jr. of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI).  -  I was reading the newspaper article while waiting for Dr. Lesaca**

My hunch was affirmed. But this new found ability to become a mini-expert on my dad's illnesses (don't even get me started on this... I took Speech Communications in college!) does not take away the fact that I am still disappointed over what happened to Reyes.

Why am I disappointed? Well for starters, and I'm sure I will not take flak for saying and believing this, his act of taking his life away neither solves the problems of the Armed Forces of the Philippines nor saves his family from further humiliation. Needless to say, he could have done better. There could have been other ways.

It has also become a well-established fact, through the centuries, that devout Catholics will always have their say. It thus, came as no great surprise, when a well-respected mentor pointed out that "Psychology 101 does not trump the Fifth Commandment" the moment I informed her and her friends/colleagues about the CBCP's stand and of Dr. Lesaca's opinion on what happened to Reyes.

Because, as one can see from my previous blogs, I'm not the type who'd just shut up after supposedly being the object of a "shame on you" comment from someone on my mentor's Facebook and being attacked by others because of my otherwise factual posts, I googled my way into determining what could have been CBCP's basis. And I was not failed or disappointed. A 1917 Canonical Law revised in 1983 states:

"Christian burial is to be refused to suicides (this prohibition is as old as the fourth century; 573) except in cases that the act was committed when they were of unsound mind or unless they showed signs of repentance before death occurred."

One of the comments posted on my mentor's Facebook wall talks about how lucid Reyes sounded when he requested to not be left alone therefore he still did not merit a Catholic burial. My response that depression patients have actual moments of lucidity, unfortunately, did not draw favorable reactions. And understandably so.

My understanding though of critics of Reyes's death and the Church's decision to give him a Catholic burial though does not come without reservations on my part if we were also to remove the critically ill mental patients from the equation.

When Secretary Angelo Reyes took his life away, if he were, truly, of an unsound mind, we could argue that he did not commit a mortal sin; that he was not free from that capability to come to a sound judgement of his own.

When Secretary Angelo Reyes took his life away, we could flip the coin and realize that his actions that led to his heartbreaking decision would always haunt us whose frames of mind sometimes allow the negative, all the evil in this world, to win.

Ultimately, we are truly not the ones to dictate if he had the right to a Catholic burial as in the end, it would not matter if he had one or if he were refused one. The Judge up there would always have the final say. As what Episcopal priest Robert Watson said of people who committed or attempted to commit suicide "We need to let them know that they will not be cut off from the love of God."

In the meantime, rest in peace, sir. You will be missed.

Hearts and Valentine's Day

What I got for my hubby:

As seen on my FB wall post with the caption, "Just because we can't wait: You are as noble and as handsome
as Optimus Prime and as cute and as funny as Bumblebee. You are a Transformer
because you transformed my life. Happy Valentine's Day, hon!"

The jaw-dropping gift he got for me:

Why was it jaw-dropping? Well for starters he already got me my wish: A sterling silver necklace with a heart pendant made of lab-created ruby. How was I supposed to know that he'd give another one whose specifications
made me think I should never wear this while walking in Manila?Check this out.

So when walking in Manila, I should, instead, wear this Accessories by Precious creation of mine:

My first polymer clay "bead" pendant for the love-themed necklace I made just in time for Valentine's. :)