Care for your parents

I lost my father in our old house in Bacolod City when I was 13. He suffered a treacherous heart attack while I was asleep. My elder half-sister awoke when she heard papa's moan. He instructed her to take his medicine kept in a cabinet but it was too late. My sister said papa shed tears before he died, a year after he retired as government employee. On hindsight, I think he was worried about what would happen to us. 

And he was right to worry. After his death, my sister and I were separated from our brother who went back to Cebu where he worked and continued his studies in civil engineering. My sister and I were taken by my uncle to Romblon where we had to work in the farm. Having lived in the city where we did not have to do household chores, the new life was a nightmare. When papa was alive I had never thought about the future. I was not even serious with my studies. His death made me dream to pursue a college education.

After high school,  I ran away from my uncle's household, knowing that the family would not allow me to leave as they wanted me to work in the farm - plow the fields, help during the planting and harvest seasons and took care of the family's four carabaos, which I used to do when I was not in school. They wanted me to quit my studies but I refused. I finished high school on the pension of my father. In the meantime, my brother, who did not finish his studies, went to Romblon after losing his job in Cebu.

The Romblon High School where I finished my secondary education.

My mother contracted leprosy when I was a toddler. Since there was no institution for treating leprosy in Negros Occidental, my father asked for a job transfer to Cebu City so that my mother could be treated at a leprosarium in Concepcion, Cebu province. At the leper colony, she met a man who courted her and whom she married with the consent of papa. I recalled her going to our house with her new husband to seek the help of my father when they had hard times making ends meet.

I knew that she was my mother, papa having told me so, but I understood why she would not hug me. In fact, there was an instruction from papa not to go near mama and mama herself would tell me that she could not embrace me. So I just watched them while they were talking on the porch - my father, my mother and her new husband, Tiyo Porting. My father, who was a widower and teacher before he joined the public highways, was more than twice older than my mother, who was his student and was a teenager when he married her.

When papa retired as a foreman at the then Bureau of Public Highways in Cebu, we went back to Bacolod where he put up a small sari-sari store. I was in grade 6 when we moved to Bacolod and was in first year high school when he died. Since we moved to Bacolod, we had not seen mama, who already had a family of her own at the leper colony. 

My wife, Marilyn, our daughter, Maria Angeline, during our vacation in Singapore. The boy at right is Joshua, a child of a family friend.

I met my mother again when I went back to Cebu and lived with the family of a relative while I was looking for a job in my struggle to pursue a college education. Occasionally, I would visit my mother and even slept in their home inside the leper colony. Every time I went back to my relatives they would make a bonfire fed with some leaves and made me stay in front of the bonfire where the wind would blow the smoke in my direction.

My mother died when I was 20, a year after I left Cebu, having not found a job there. I was then taking odd jobs in Bacolod as a construction laborer whenever the husband of my cousin by my mother's side had projects as a mason. My mother died a few months after she paid me a surprise visit in Bacolod. She got sick with fever during her visit. Because I had no job when she came, I couldn't even bring her to a doctor. 

With the help of some relatives who administered herbal treatment, she was healed and went back to Cebu when she felt that she was strong enough to travel. A few months later, I heard that she died shortly after her arrival in their home. She had a relapse. When I heard the news, I was working for a construction company which later took me to Batangas up north where we worked on some projects.

My child and I during her graduation from grade school

From Batangas, where I took up an AB course at the Golden Gate Colleges at night while working as a construction laborer on day time, I had moved to Manila where I later found a job as a security guard to be able to pursue a course in journalism at the Lyceum of the Philippines. If, indeed, there is an afterlife and my parents could see me from there, I hope they are happy to see their son made it in life - whatever that means - after a long, nightmarish struggle.

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Postscript: I was reunited with my sister, Purita - who had worked as a maid for a wealthy relative in Makati after I left Romblon - when I got married and bought our own home in Bacoor, Cavite. She died there a few years later. My brother died last year in Bacolod City where he had returned after finding out that Romblon was also not for him. He died a year after his wife's demise. They had no child.

To those who do not know me, I am a Filipino journalist. I wrote this article for my Facebook site when I saw the poster above posted  on FB. I decided to post it here to dispell notions that I always think about money because of this blog. No, I'm not a materialist but I do realize that although it is true that man does not live on bread alone, it is equally true that man cannot live without bread. I have another blog Salt Of Life, which touches on religion, philosophy and science. Although I have not posted new articles on it for more than a year now, it is still being read. You may go to the site http://www,salt-romblonwriter.blogsspot.com.