Grief is a confusing thing. Especially when you’re in another country and you wake up, blearily check the messages on your computer, and read the news that makes you bolt straight out of bed. You have no choice but to fast-forward through the stages—from denial to depression and straight to acceptance. Well, with a little bit of anger thrown in. It’s frustrating to be away from your loved ones, and you’re expected to forget about how everyone’s coping with the tragedy that has just occurred back home—and to enjoy yourself. It’s strange and it’s selfish, and the timing cannot be any worse.
But you go through the day anyway, like a robot. It’s not like you can just fly home whenever you want to.
You end the day’s class and decide to offer Mass for him at the Westminster Cathedral. It’s one of the grandest, most beautiful churches you’ve ever seen. And then it hits you: Your grandfather never had the privilege of marvelling at this structure in person. He never had to figure out the vast London Underground. He never set foot on this country, and never will.
It’s been a while since you last went to Mass. But it just feels right to do it at this time. To talk to God. To be in a conversation with someone who’s there with you all the time. Someone who understands what “lolo” means, without you having to translate it. Someone who decided to take your grandfather away this morning, for some reason.
It’s said you are your best self when you are in heaven, in the form when you were “perfect” (or closest to it) when you were alive. It’s hard to imagine the form that your grandfather is in now, but for sure it’s not the one he left Earth in—his skin cracking and peeling and his mind jumping from one decade to the next and never settling on the present. He was, really and truly, one handsome guy. Picture him with his dark hair perfectly gelled back in a classic 1950s do, with the faintest trace of wrinkles on his face, his eyes bright and alert. Imagine him laughing boisterously and waking the cherubs from their naps on their fluffy cloud beds. Imagine him energetic, confident, and at peace. And maybe that’s the reason God decided it was time to take him.
He lived a long life: 86 years, with one wife, six children, 14 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren—and counting. He probably never saw a cathedral as grand and majestic as the one in which you heard Mass. But he had a family, an honorable job, a lot to leave behind. That was his wealth.
Maybe you don’t measure a life by the number of times you leave your country to travel to other ones, but by the number of brokenhearted people you leave behind.
You are snapped out of your reverie by a young Englishwoman reaching out to shake your hand. “Peace be with you,” she says, beaming. You extend your hand and manage a smile.
Handshakes. Whatever happened to beso or mano po? To touching your grandfather’s hand to your forehead (a sign of respect)? That’s never going to happen again. He will never go into another longwinded story about the war, or attend your recitals or graduation, or kick you out of his room, where you were watching DVDs with your cousins.
You grew up with four grandparents—the complete set. For as long as you could remember, there had been four. He was 70-plus years old for so many years. You always found him eccentric—but charming, lovable. You never had a heart-to-heart conversation with him, but he could tell you about the past. He could tell you about the time he took the bar exam. He could pose for your camera, wearing a cap backward on his head. He could keep on living and admire you as you settled into your youth.
The priest booms, “Lord, I am not worthy to enter under Your roof. But only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.”
He received you under his roof in Bacoor, Cavite, maybe once a month. He loved having his children and grandchildren over. He loved taking pictures—that’s where you got it from. It’s unsettling to think about how that will all change. It will be a lot quieter the next time you visit. And you’ll want to break the silence and say something, anything. But grief isn’t just a confusing thing. It’s heavy. It hangs over your head, it weighs you down, and it won’t ever make you forget. You can still reminisce about the good times with him, sure. But you can’t help feeling that time has now split into two eras: “when he was still alive” and “after.”
“Go in peace,” says the priest, dismissing the congregation. People slowly file out of the cathedral.
You realize you’re hungry and decide to stop at a coffee shop. The cashier rings up your order quickly, and as soon as you step out of the way, someone behind you gives his own order. Everything moves so fast in this city, in this life. And your encounter with this cashier is one out of a thousand in a day; it’s nothing more to him.
This realization makes you think about something oddly philosophical that your classmate said just a few hours before, during a field trip to the immense, crowded British
Museum. “Don’t you ever wonder how many strangers’ pictures you end up in? There were probably so many taken of you while you’re just standing there.”
But if you look at it in reverse, there are millions of people who end up in the pictures you take. Sometimes strangers make the picture so much better. You can Instagram a snapshot of a concert and show how many people filled the stadium. Or take a picture of a tall structure with a random person passing by, which reveals the scale of it.
But only a handful of the same people are intentionally in a million of your pictures—the ones you grew up with, your sisters and your childhood friends, your cousins, your
parents, your grandparents… It dawns on you that there won’t be a complete family picture ever again.
And it’s bewildering to think that you can interact with dozens of strangers in a day but they all have their own
“constants”—their friends and their families. Our paths can intersect for a minute with theirs, but for about 70 percent of your life, you stick to the people you grew up with.
So much of your life is lived with their lives. So much of your grief is their grief.
So much of him is still alive. He lives in the angles of our noses and chins. He lives on in the times we laugh at an inappropriate volume. He lives on in the pictures he insisted we take, in the times we befriended strangers (which he loved to do), in the bar exam you will eventually take—and in all the ways in which we remember him.
He lives on in these words. For the beauty of it all is that despite death, anyone who writes has the power to immortalize another human being.
This isn’t a flight home to grieve, or a comforting hug with a matching peck on the cheek. This may not be much. This may not be anything at all. But for now, hopefully, it’s enough.
Maria Selena Remulla-Fortun, 21, wrote this piece when her grandfather, Willelmo C. Fortun, passed away last July 24. She was then in London on a monthlong summer course. She is now a freshman at the University of the Philippines College of Law.