When Life Happens...

Just got off a phone conversation with my mom. She was at Galleria buying a plane ticket on her way to our province in Cotabato, which is somewhere in the southern Philippines. She said that her mom is in critical condition and that her life is now being counted in days, if not hours. All of this came as a shock to me, putting me temporarily speechless. As I listened to my mom--dumbfounded nonetheless--I can sense urgency from her voice. She said she was flying out the next day.

During the chat, and immediately afterwards I felt curiously empty. I honestly didn't feel anything about it--not even hints of remorse... I was strangely disattached. Not risking sounding insensitive during the call, I put up some cliches--those that one is supposed to say in times like this.

The truth is, my grandmother and I didn't really get to know each other. She was a quiet individual, and the more boisterous personalities of my aunts and uncles tend to fill up my life more. And our lives simply diverge--she spent most of her time in the fields in our province, while I lived mostly in Manila, and then of course, the United States. If I can count correctly, we met each other less than 5 times in our lives.

But with dis-attachment, there started to creep a feeling of guilt. Why am I not even feeling the slightest bit of remorse? Am I a bad kid for not feeling it? What kind of grandson am I who does not even care for his grandmother on her deathbed. Should I force myself to feel remorse?

In the end, the best I could do is offer my sincere help to my mom and aunts and uncles. And to appreciate the woman that is my grandmother. I don't regret that I didn't know more about her.

And even if we're thousands of miles apart, I can offer to her is my sincere smile and warm waves of farewell...