Tag: parent

Figuring Out the Logistics of Loss While Inside the Coffee Shop

As I wait for that last P2P bus going to the Bicol International Airport, I re-read my most recent blog about figuring our the logistics of loss. Here is a recap of sorts:

a. Kazakhstan is cancelled for 2026. I rechanneled the funds to a local travel with my family and for tanking another “Death Plan”

b. Taiwan alpine hike is at 50-50, meaning, I am still undecided on tanking the credit card bills for three months worth, just to take a difficult trail (because the body and mental health needed it)

c. I did the KiudKad – the last resort this week, to have a rest, to hike the mini-peak of Daldagon, to play mobile legends, to read novels and poems… and totally forgotten to ugly cry.

As of this moment, I do not have the capacity or the space to do the ugly dramas of grieving; I just received a message from Mama that the GSIS is yet requiring another document to submit when I get back to Manila. Another set of “burden of proof”, another subset of Remedial Law that I read in my younger years, another count of the two-to-three-weeks before them saying, “Mrs. Betos is entitled to the Surviving Spouse benefit. Please proceed to the Landbank Account Opening on the Pensioner’s Lounge.”

The last time I ugly cried was three years ago, when I was asked, “Why are you really here?” and my response was the tears of hope and a possibility of a parallel timeline of a Tax Accountant’s wife, disintegrated before my very eyes. Moreoften than then I think about things, and no matter how polished a death plan is, the life is indeed fleeting and I still feel like rushing on the moments when I should be still.

Does ugly crying become a personal tick box that I long to check, making sure that my sagacity is earned with emotional maturity?

What if I tell you, that I forgot to grieve the moment I left my eight-year-old American tourister in the middle of the Eminent luggage store in Taichung HSR, while rushing for the bullet train bound for Taipei?

Will I still be that person that you seek wisdom for?

Happy birthday, Mr. C!

Dear Charlie, 

Happy birthday! How does it feel to be a 39-year-old-high-functioning adult? Me? I am barely getting by without shedding a tear every day.

Pagkagising ko, yung nanay ko kino-call out yung laki ng katawan ko. Perhaps out of concern, but I felt like it was out of spite. At her timeline reaching 39, she was pregnant to my youngest brother (to which I became a co-parent of), and papa was punishing her by handwashing a king-sized bedsheet, without any help from her kids. She almost had miscarriage with JB. She was so thin, kind of a trauma response to the survival mode. And I believe she felt alone at that phase of her life. 

At 39, I feel like I was living mama’s alternate reality: Literally living alone, yet thriving in the Corporate career she aspires — just received a good news of huge promotion, forging and / or fortifying communities from her interests and hobbies, saving up for travels and retirement, essentially “winging adulting”. And yet, when I sat down in my home office, I feel the heavy weight of her feisty reminder,

“Magpa-check ka na ng katawan mo at ang laki mo na!”

This afternoon, albeit relatively felt okay, I was suddenly thrusted into a anxious spiral of body dysmorphia and the seething sentiment of:

I am still not enough. 

That daydream goes back as my totem and my solace. If only I was that wife, I will be definitely out of this timeline. Lord, sana maumpog na siya and he would woo me! Susubukan ko magpakipot, kahit alam ng mundo na marupok ako. 

Sorry Charlie, oversharing. Kindly ignore those long sentences. What I really wanted to say was I wish you a moment of peace and a feeling of abundance. 

You are enough.

Thank you for being a friend.