13th POST LOLA'S DEATH

122607
7:00 PM

Camus The Outsider
"It struck me that I’d better see about some dinner. I had been leaning so long on the back of my chair, looking down, that my neck hurt when I straightened myself up. I went down, bought some bread and spaghetti, did my cooking, and ate my meal standing. I’d intended to smoke another cigarette at my window, but the night had turned rather chilly and I decided against it. As I was coming back, after shutting the window, I glanced at the mirror and saw reflected in it a corner of my table with my spirit lamp and some bits of bread beside it. It occurred to me that somehow I’d got through another Sunday, that Mother now was buried, and tomorrow I’d be going back to work as usual. Really, nothing in my life had changed.

http://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/CAMUS,%20Albert%20-%20The%20Stranger.pdf

"I GLANCED AT THE MIRROR"- up to the end.
The reader should try to "FEEL" the experience expressed by the words...
One is aware of what one sees but there is an accompanying/underlying thought that is not at all connected with what one senses/perceives...
[This is one of the fascination of language & of written art or literature... how these somehow capture the essence or features of our emotions & experiences.]
The feeling imparted to me by the words is precisely the feeling/experience I had in connection with the part/section of our old G.E. ref - the white rubber stop above the upper freezer door hinge as seen from an angle to the left of the ref... This is THE CLEAR MEMORY TRACE I still have of that early evening (about 5:30 PM) November 26, 1976 when my (late) father uttered the words.. "Uuwi tayo. Patay na ang lola mo."
I replied nonchalantly, "Ah. patay na ho?
I was thinking he was referring to his (my paternal grand_) mother (to whom I was not emotionally attached).
He clarified... "Uuwi tayong Batangas. Patay na ang Lola Isyang mo"...
The whole experience actually requires more words...
In fact, I think I can write a whole book about it, my first emotional encounter with DEATH...
I need only to point out that my grandmother's death really HIT me hard...
I didn't believe/couldn't accept she was already dead. During her wake I kept on thinking she would wake up. She had a reputation for "coming back from the dead" - more than once. She was asthmatic...
[After one such incident she asked for water because she felt so thirsty... She related she had travelled to a distant place!
Note occult/mysticism experts: This is not an uncommon story related by those who have "died" & returned...

During the few days of her wake,
I exhibited what existentialist Sartre termed BAD FAITH (a philosophic notion) ...
I only realized the TRUTH (of her death) or the REALITY of her DEATH forced itself on me when they were already closing the coffin & when the funeral car began to move out of the church - that was when the all the emotions poured out & I CRIED uncontrollably... I was deeply attached to her... My aunt always referred to me as "APO NI NGANGA"
[My grandmother chewed betel (NGANGA or MAMA in some dialects...)

TO BE CONTINUED

I'll also relate later:
-My mother's "seeing" the dead mother of a sick boy in her boarding house in Batangas City
-My late Aunt Sally's (that's how Americans called her) being "guarded" by her dead father in 1936-1939 in Calauag, Quezon
-How she was saved from a Japanese raid of the house in Manila where she stayed (that led to the capture of her friend who was tortured to death in Fort Santiago & whom she saw in a DREAM) through a DREAM of her mother (my LOLA)
-My other aunt's seeing HANDS in a room in our ancestral house in Alitagtag, Batangas.

I don't remember my brother & sister telling any convincing personal ghost stories. I believe I'm more "sensitive" than them... I have two additional "ghost" stories to relate... The reader will see why I cannot be an atheist though I am close to existentialism...

I guess today's generation are so MATERIALISTIC they can no longer appreciate the reality of the "spirit" realm or cannot perceive/relate with it.
Maybe in the past human beings were really spiritual... & as time passed they became GROSSER...