Lola

Last night, I dreamed about my grandmother. It’s hard to tell if it really was a dream or if it was a memory from when I was a child.

We were shopping at the public outdoor market in downtown Cebu riding a tartanilla (a horse drawn carriage). I was wearing my least favorite yellow tiered dress. 

I remember that dress vividly. I hated the way the topmost tier, the one closest to my tummy, fanned up every time I breathed in. Some memories just don’t go away no matter how you repress them. 

I was holding an ice cream cone in one hand and a bag of green juice in another. My sister was sitting next to me and my lola (grandma) was across from us. She was mad about something my sister did. I looked at her face, at the brown flowy dress she was wearing, and at the bag of vegetables on her lap. 

Lola was a petite woman, about 4’7”, with a slim frame. As I sit here trying to remember her face, I could recall her small deep seated eyes and her long dark hair that she liked putting up in a bun. I want to picture the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled or how tightly she pressed her lips together when she was mad, but my memory fails me. I do remember, though, how her presence made me feel at home, wrapped in a warm blanket, and away from anything scary or heartbreaking. 

My sister went up to her, said she was sorry, and lola told me that I can give my sister her green juice back. I hesitated but my sister grabbed it from me with authority and lola laughed. 

Lola practically raised me and my sisters. My parents had full time jobs. I only saw my mother on weekends, on weeknights when she came home early, and on days when I needed to be given extra discipline for being the wayward child that I was. My father was mostly away on assignment so we only saw him once a month (it seemed). Up until we moved to our new house in the suburbs in my second year of high school, we lived with lola.

She cooked for us, doted on us, and basically let us run around like wild chickens in the backyard after school. She would only call us in when it was time to get cleaned up for dinner, do our homework, and prepare for  bedtime. She didn’t reprimand us for messing up the house with our antics or whenever we walked in out of the living room tracking mud all over the floor and carpets. 

We got off the tartanilla and went to the bakeshop to buy Spanish bread, pan de leche, and pandesal, three of my favorites, because it was my birthday. 

Birthdays were a big thing for lola. I remember how as a child she would wake me up early on my birthday for a weird ritual. She grabbed a chicken from the shed, slit its throat, gathered its blood and used it to mark my forehead with the sign of a cross. My sister didn’t have the stomach for it. I was surprisingly not bothered by the gory sight. The smell of blood made me gag but I bravely went through the ceremony without complaint because it pleased lola so much. I would’ve done anything for her. I would give her the world if I could.

My mother often noted that I loved lola more than anyone. And she wasn’t wrong. I was lola’s favorite! And I knew this because she told me so. Several times. She probably told my sisters the same thing but I didn’t care. I knew I was her Inday (girl). And that was enough. 

When she got sick, I was heartbroken. I saw her change from a vibrant, quick-witted woman to a frail, disoriented, and forgetful person that I didn’t know. She stopped doing the things that she loved. She stopped cooking. She was whining a lot. And she seemed to have forgotten that I was no longer the child that she had to protect. 

I remember how I had to lock my door while I was studying for the board exam because she was constanly bothering me with things like making sure I had the lights on (even though it was daytime) or that I had my coat on so I don’t get sick even though it was warm in my room. The locked door didn’t faze her though. She knocked at various times at any given day and I often ignored her and pretended to be asleep until she gave up and left me alone. However, there was one instance when she banged on my door so forcefully and called out my name like the house was on fire. When I opened it, she looked all concerned and said, “Ayaw i-lock ang pultahan. Mohilak ang bata.” (Don’t lock the door. The child will cry.) I teared up at the memory. 

When I was about 4 years old, I managed to lock myself in a room and screamed so loud because I didn’t know how to open the door to let myself out. The door could only be opened from the inside. My mother patiently walked me through the steps of how to open it while lola quietly sang to keep me calm. When I finally made it out, lola hugged me with tears in her eyes and she cooked me my favorite snack, champorado (chocolate porridge).

Three days after the board exam, I got a phone call from a friend who told me that she got hold of the morning paper with the results and I passed. I shrieked with happiness! Lola walked up to me while I was still on the phone talking excitedly, stroked my forehead and said, “Daan pa ko! Makapasar gyud lagi ka, Dai. Bright gud ka!” (I knew you will pass that exam. You are smart!). I didn’t even know she was aware that I took an exam. I cried and hugged her and instantly regretted all the times that I took her for granted. Two months later, she was gone. 

I would give anything to relive those few months. To take back all the repressed annoyance that I felt every time she asked me questions about a toy I had when I was 8, or when she took all of my socks from my drawer because she said she was going to wash them even though they were clean, or when she touched my hair and realized that she forgot to wash her hands after she went to the bathroom. I attributed my behavior to the stress brought on by the board exams. It’s a flimsy excuse, I know. Although I never showed her any sort of unpleasantness (I never had the heart to do that), I still feel guilty that I felt annoyed at all. 

I was hanging out in the city with my friends when she died. When I got home, my uncle who was watching over her, told me that she died while she was taking her afternoon nap. I was numb.  

My mother, who was too grief stricken, asked me to make all the arrangements for the funeral. I did as I was told and worked like a robot. I was sad but I didn’t shed a single tear. I told myself that I was reassured by the fact that she is in heaven.

I didn’t cry. Not on the day she died. Not during the viewing. Not even during the funeral. I was a rock.

A year later, I was sitting on my bed preparing to go to sleep when I suddenly had a vivid memory of lola calling my name. 

And then the dam broke. 

The sound of her voice in my head, soothing, singing, happy, unravelled the strings that I tied around my heart to keep it together. I did not think it was possible to feel such heartache, such grief, such sorrow. As though someone reached into my chest and squeezed all the tears out of my heart till they leaked out of my eyes. As though all hope, all joy, everything good and beautiful were sucked out of the universe and I had to exist in a hollow shell devoid of anything worth living for. To say that I was broken, is an understatement. 

My memories of lola are fading. She is like a beautiful dream that I try hard to remember in the morning. Oh the things that I would give for her to see me living out my dreams! I wish she lived long enough to see me going off on all the adventures I told her I was going on when I was a child. If only she were alive to see how her favorite girl has had her heart broken, stumbled, fallen over, dusted herself off, and kept on going. I may not be anyone to many people, but I know that I will always be my lola’s “Inday”.

And that’s enough. 

Lola's backyardigans