Dispatches on a love unshared
People tout the phrase “time heals all wounds” like an all-encompassing panacea. It imparts a misleading hope that things will be magically better with the passing of time. In recent years, I’ve come to realize how misguided this sentiment can be. Time may heal wounds, but scars linger as reminders of what used to be.
I sit with the grief that scarred me — those are moments I learned to celebrate — fully embracing and unshackling all the love I can no longer share. To borrow the words of Andrew Garfield: “I hope the grief stays with me because it’s all the unexpressed love I didn’t get to share.”
What follows are journal entries borne from fleeting moments of catharsis.
Each night and ever more
14 July 2023, 11:23 p.m.
The air conditioner whirs at 24 degrees Celsius. A grey fleece blanket with a tabby cat design hugs me. I’m wearing my white-over-black striped shirt, the same top I wore when we went to the Quezon City Memorial Circle to look at plants and bike. I remember because I made a photo of us from that day my Facebook profile picture the day you died.
For so long, I have been meaning to write about the expanse grief has taken in my days. It’s like a shadow, often unnoticed but always there. I can live with that. But every time I try to capture how I feel and turn the abstract void and physical tears into something more concrete, like words, I am lost.
A week ago, I laid comfortably in bed, the same fleece blanket over me, earphones on the sides of my face. This was the weekend Taylor Swift released her version of the album Speak Now.
The familiar first few bars of Mine start playing, and, immediately, I was transported to our childhood home: in the dressing room that was not exclusively used for wardrobe as it also housed our shared family computer, set up in a blue desk, which I monopolized more often than necessary.
(In that memory, I was in high school. It was the wrong year. Maricel was also in high school, long sleeves rolled up, plucking her guitar strings in her lavender-walled room.)
I only meant to enjoy the songs I used to love guiltlessly for, since the controversy with Taylor’s masters not being her own, I tried hard to not stream any of the old recordings. I skipped Red (Taylor’s Version) — though, let’s be honest, who skips the 10-minute version of All Too Well? — because I knew you were waiting for it.
You couldn’t though. It was not enough to make you stay.
Instead, I looked for something else to ground me. I found Enya, whose music set the bar for evoking universal calm. Enya’s music does not even require promotion; it speaks for itself.
Only to be reminded that you also liked listening to her.
Last night, I let the Spotify algorithm choose the songs for me. There were two that resonated with me: Amarantine and So I Could Find My Way. It was the first time I heard these songs. As I listened, I took mental notes to know their backstories when I can and figure out what about them struck me.
You know love may sometimes make you cry
So let the tears go, they will flow away
For you know love will always let you fly
How far a heart can fly away
Amarantine was supposedly inspired by the perennial amaranth flower, one that in mythology is believed to never fade. The word was based on the Greek word amarantos, which means “undying”. In the promotional box of the album, Enya said, “In this song, Amarantine means ‘everlasting’. It is a song about love.”
Enya, meanwhile, dedicated So I Could Find My Way to a friend’s mother who passed.
“You think about what she left behind in your life... That’s what you’ll always remember,” she said in an interview.
A thousand dreams you gave to me
You held me high, you held me high
...
So let me give this dream to you
Each night and ever more
Yet only time keeps us apart
You held me high, you held me high
You're in the shadows of my heart
So I can find my way
I love how these songs speak of the power of love to transcend death and continue to guide us, despite it, through dark times.
Because I know, since Maricel died, she was never apart from me.
So much of her continues inform my decisions and the way I live today.
Tyranny of grief
22 June 2023; 2:26 a.m.
I did not immediately step off the raised platform that night. After the customary group photo with the newlyweds, I whispered to the lovely bride Zi a question that was probably the most embarrassing I had ever had to ask a friend: “After the reception, may I steal some of your tulips?”
She laughed, then told me to go for it. I was so proud of myself for asking that question even if I already knew the answer. Floral arrangements in most weddings typically become expensive trash, beautiful wastes, after the hours-long ceremonies. It would be sad to see them go.
So, after the wonderful program, I took home five stems of red tulips — red, being my favorite color; tulips, my favorite flower; and, for whatever reason, that very combination had been hard for me to find.
It has been days since the lovely flowers adorned my home. Last night, the petals began to wither and fall. I was thinking about what to do with them. They were still, in my eyes, too pretty and delicate to toss yet unnecessary to keep.
Then, a light bulb moment: Keep them in a potpourri.
Then, another light bulb moment: That’s what Maricel would do. That’s what Maricel would have done. That’s what Maricel did.
Our mother was probably the best homemaker I’d seen, save from her culinary deficiencies. She kept several home improvement and crafts books where I learned how to make potpourri. Not that I ever tried to make one. Maricel did, though. She collected dried petals from flower bouquets and kept them in glass bottles, as others would do with sand from beaches they visited.
This Wednesday night, for something not even remotely connected to my sister — the wedding of a friend she did not even know — I found myself locked in my fading memories of her, and, well, crying.
It’s been more than two years since she passed, and the void she left still feels as immense as it was in Day 1. Every time I give myself space to mourn, and think I’ve given myself enough time to feel, I always go back to the lingering sense of not doing enough, of still not having been able to properly grieve.
Days ago, I met Chiara at a restaurant and talked about industry woes and how they affect journalists’ mental health. I told her about how, during the franchise hearing in Congress, I felt so defeated about the work we do, how everything we’ve been doing is pointless because nothing changes.
I shared how Rodel’s words stayed with me: We will never get direct feedback from the work we do, and our stories will never change society as much as we want to. But if there is just one person whose life changed because of your work, then that is enough.
I had always attached the image of that one person to Maricel.
And with her absence, I feel that my conundrum about the purposefulness of the work I do will never get resolved.
I cried that rainy afternoon in public. Chiara was kind enough to let me.
Over the past months, there have been so many things that reminded me of Maricel: the Apple TV series Shrinking for its plot and opening song, which was written and recorded by her favorite band Death Cab for Cutie; Rick and Morty’s Don’t Look Back, because of its theme of moving forward in the midst of losses, even if it had always previously reminded me of the ABS-CBN shutdown; and even Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert, because I know if she were still alive, I would have asked if she would want to come, we would be making plans, and I would fight fiercely to make it happen.
That’s the thing with grief, I guess. It demands to be felt.
John Wick and his beautiful grief
17 April 2023; 5:45 p.m.
Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City — What’s funny is how, as soon as I decided I will be making use of my time in some pocket of solitude in an otherwise bustling city while waiting for my brother-in-law, a stray ginger cat sneezed loudly. It was one of the few little joys, scarce sources of wonder, in my life lately. It made my day.
My other happiness has been visits to malls. Since, and perhaps because of, the pandemic, where restrictions nearly dictated a sedentary and isolated lifestyle, I discovered a love for mostly mindless walks. Sure, I don’t have to go to the malls to walk, but the lack of public, accessible, and safe green spaces limited comfortable options. And in malls come the occasional retail therapy. And movies.
Nigel and I watched John Wick 4 in the iMax theater, one of our recent splurges that we considered self-care. I have friends telling me I don’t look like the type to enjoy John Wick movies, but I do. I’ve always found the world-building intriguing, characters fleshed-out, and motivations well-developed.
More than the thrilling cinematic experience, however, after rewatching the entire franchise, I saw John Wick in a different light. To me, he was no longer a man striving to escape the clutches of a stifling system of violence and vengeance, but a widower desperately looking for a moment of peace to grieve his wife.
Sure, the death of his wife had always been an underlying theme, the inciting incident. But John Wick pulling out all the stops was not solely because of his focus, commitment, and sheer will but also his profound love for someone now existing only in his mind. It shows how underneath the dogged determination lies a vulnerability, equally poignant and relatable, never denied or subdued.
Grief can be a moving force. •