MY mother died at the age of 94 in 2001. She had a long life as a single mother of three daughters. Her husband, my father, was killed by an American bomb when Baguio was carpet-bombed in 1945. I was the eldest and not yet 7. My two younger sisters hardly remember World War II. I do and will someday write about it. My mother also subsequently lost my baby brother of 18 months to dysentery due to lack of intravenous fluids in 1945 in Manila.
She was from Baguio and spent the rest of her life there, first helping my grandfather with his hotel and then managing it when he passed away. She was a gentle person, prone to being dominated by her sisters, whether younger or older. She had not gone to formal school since a brief period before the war. She was taught piano instead. She went to daily Mass. She walked all over Baguio to go to church, to market, to socials. She belonged to Catholic organizations, and in the simple egalitarian quality of Baguio life in the 1950s and early 1960s, was considered a pillar of the city despite her modesty and simplicity. She was buried in Baguio in the family plot beside her parents, her husband, her son, an aunt and a sister.
I am now the eldest of my generation on my maternal side. There is only a niece and I, here, duty-bound to go to cemeteries during these days of All Souls. Uncles and aunts buried here in various cemeteries have children who live away. Then there is Cementerio del Norte, where my husband is buried in the family mausoleum. We go there way after All Souls due to the chaos and mayhem that occurs in Norte in the days before and during All Souls. And Baguio.
When recently in Baguio, I decided to preempt the date for visiting the cemetery and check it by two weeks ahead of All Souls’ Day. I noted that the marble gravestones on the ground of our cemetery plot had corroded enough that you could hardly distinguish the names. But I did identify my grandparents’ gravestones, my grandaunt’s and my aunt’s. And noted my father and brother’s names on one. Suddenly, I was shocked to note that there was no gravestone, or lapida, for my mother. I distinctly remember where we had buried her ashes, and it was vacant with grass growing. I could not believe that I had not put a lapida during or after her burial. And worse, that all these years, I believed that I had despite subsequent visits to the cemetery.
Guilt overcame me. I had neglected the Baguio cemetery plot, noting the missing lapida and the difficulty in reading the marble gravestones, which had corroded. I did what I could there and then, and asked the caretaker to sandpaper the marble gravestones so the names would be clearer. Then I confessed my lapse to my sisters who also live away. They tsked, tsked, but my children were so upset they made me feel guilty. Poor Lola Nena, they said, with the unsaid thought of how she unfortunately had a neglectful daughter.
Upon arrival in Manila because I had no time in Baguio, I rushed to a gravestone shop next to Loyola Marikina and ordered a granite one. My mother has a long name, but the old lady in the shop graciously said they would not charge more for it. Thus, (Justina Candelaria Vallejo Garcia – Feb. 2, 1907, Polangui, Albay – May 31, 2001, Manila) was engraved, and I had a lapida four days later. Whereupon I rushed back to Baguio with it and had it placed on the grass growing over where we had buried her ashes. Then I looked at the newly sanded headstones where the names stood out clearly. There was my grandfather, Salvador Vallejo, with my grandmother, Justina Sanares, my great aunt, Paz Vallejo, my aunt, Conchita Vallejo, and then my father and brother, Juan Garcia, Juan Rafael Garcia and, total surprise, there, too, was my mother’s name, Justina Vallejo Garcia. She had her name engraved in a gravestone all these years, and I had missed it!
Nevertheless, her long life deserves her own gravestone. Hers is the most recent death, and the new gravestone ordered by me is my penance and love for her.
Curiously, the gravestone shop put a gratuitous line at the bottom without asking me or my asking them. It read, “Your loved immeasurably and missed interminably.” Sentimental, ungrammatical (“your” should be “you are”) but perfect in thought and feeling. I will keep it as it is despite having taught English grammar. It is for the memory of my mental lapse and how it all ended.
May we remember our dead in love and gratitude, and care for their memory in our hearts and their gravestones.
