My mother would’ve turned 80 this weekend had she not passed away unexpectedly, 10 years ago, 12 days after she turned 70. Aside from memories, the only physical part of her person left with us today are part of her ashes in the crypt of Sanctuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park and a small [...]
Sometime in the latter part of this year, our 95-year-old mother became terminally ill. She had been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease some eight years earlier. Out of respect for her privacy, I shall not mention the disease, but its common name alone is already a death sentence. At the onset of that diagnosis then, supported by a biopsy result, the medical specialist had advised me to prepare for her eventual death. “Within less than a year,” he had said. Eight years later, the medical prophecy had not happened.
I found myself in tears again as I was reading, very belatedly, the Youngblood article “Ok luv u” by Marrian Pio Roda Ching (Inquirer, 6/16/12). I wish I had not read it, just as I constantly wish that I never get to read, see, feel, taste, or smell anything that will remind me of my mother who passed away in October 2011.
I lit a candle the shade of blue outside St. Peter Parish Church on Commonwealth Avenue. The blaring of horns and the sound of the engines of passing jeepneys and buses might as well have ruptured my eardrums, but I became oblivious to stimulus of any kind the minute I started praying. My prayer was simple, yet I could not bear the way it consumed me. I wanted to subdue the sobbing, even for only a moment, but I couldn’t. I could have attempted with a box of tissues until the tears ran dry, yet even if I succeeded, I knew the weeping would just get louder inside, almost insanely, each and every time.
A thesis by two 2012 graduates of AB Economics at Ateneo de Manila University may provide policymakers and advocates of breast-feeding information to achieve a breast-feeding rate of more than 34 percent among infants aged up to 6 months.
I was feeling totally exhausted the other day after classes that ended at 6 p.m. and a meeting that extended up to 9 p.m. I was also feeling quite depressed, wondering if, indeed, my relatives and friends were right in saying only martyrs and fools stay on teaching.
