Lola’s sad face

My lola never smiled, but she made a lot of people smile.

When she passed away last year after a heart attack, I thought of the many things that I would miss about her. I would miss the summer days when she allowed me to play with her beads. She sewed traditional beaded Meranao decorations back then. I would miss the spicy dishes she cooked on special occasions. I am not a fan of spicy food, but her cooking was something else. I would also miss how she always checked on me whenever I visited our province. She was great in taking care of her grandchildren. She was a good person and I would surely miss her being a lola to me.

But one thing that I will never miss about my lola was her sad face.

When I was a child, I was afraid of her. I thought she was a witch who would punish me if I so much as interrupted her. I couldn’t look her straight in the face. Her body was stuck in a slouch. To the much younger version of me, she was creepy.

That could have been one of the reasons I was never close to her, and why I can’t remember a day when I gave her a smile.

Every single day, she wore a frown. From the moment she woke up in the morning until she rested her exhausted body at night, my lola looked like she was carrying the whole world on her shoulder, and she wouldn’t let other people help her.

Even if everyone around her was having fun, she seemed unable to absorb happiness. When friends and relatives visited our house, she never greeted them. She would join conversations, but mostly as a listener, not a talker.

She was never vocal about her problems. Whenever they had one, it was my aunt who would call for help from my mother who was the eldest child. Whenever she was asked if she was okay, she would tell anyone not to mind her. Even if worry or distress was written over her face, she keeps her silence. And she always looked as if she was not happy with her life.

Was my lola ever happy? I asked my mother once, and she couldn’t give me an answer. All that my mother told me was that they had problems when she was growing up, the usual problems Filipino families have to face every day.

Unlike our own family, lola’s didn’t enjoy the “good life.” They had no fancy appliances or furniture in their home, no sumptuous food at meal time, and no out-of-town vacations for family bonding. They had little and they didn’t have the chance to make more.

The family couldn’t even afford to send the children to school. My mother had to work her way though college. Her siblings, all eight of them, had to do the same. But my mother said they never blamed their mother for anything. They may have been discontented with their lot, but that never broke their family.

No, they were never a broken family. But if the look on my lola’s face didn’t translate to broken, then I don’t know what broken means.

Why her sad face? I finally summoned the courage to ask my lola the question months before she died. I didn’t plan it, but suddenly there I was, asking that stupid question straight to her face.

My lola did not reply. Her face was blank as she continued folding the clothes of my baby cousin she had washed that morning. There was a long period of awkward silence. And when she finally opened her mouth, she asked me, “You, what makes you smile?”

I froze, momentarily speechless. Then I managed to answer tremulously: “A lot of things, Lola, and you are one of those who paint a smile on my face.”

She was not looking at me, so I immediately left her. I didn’t know what to do next. I was afraid of her again, feeling the same way I did towards my lola when I was younger.

When I look back to that moment, I am still haunted by the question: If I had asked my lola what made here smile, would she have given me an answer? If I had asked her what made her smile instead of why she always looked so sad, would I have found out what made her look miserable?

I have been dying to know the story behind her sad face. I want to understand why there are people in this world who choose to keep everything to themselves. Even if my lola can’t give me the answer anymore, I hope she is smiling wherever she is right now.

Today, whenever I think of my lola, all I see is the face of sadness. I hate it. I am angry at myself that when she was still around I never made her smile. I want to forget that, but it is the only memory I have of her, an image I have to carry for the rest of my life.

And yet my lola’s sad face is one of the reasons I smile a lot. Why I try to be as happy as I can be every single day. Why there are times that I fake my emotions to change my mood. Why I always strive to put a smile on my face. I don’t want others to look at me the way I looked at my lola. I want to live a happy life and I want to feel it from the inside and let other see it on the outside.

When we were burying my lola, she looked like she was only sleeping. To me, she wasn’t dead. She still had that sad face, except that her eyes were closed. It was the longest time I stared at her face.

One time I asked my mother the same question my lola asked me: “Ma, what makes Lola smile?”

She was in tears. “Your lola never smiled, but she made a lot of people smile,” she said.

Nizam M. Pabil, 19, is a fourth year AB Communication Studies student at the Mindanao State University-Marawi.