A Strong Woman (x)
A Strong Woman. Throughout her life my mother, Patricia Abanilla Ponce Tagamolila has sacrificed her own comforts for those that she loves. She’d be the first to give up her own needs for the sake of the family. My earliest recollection of how she worked hard to get us through our difficult times was when she would wake up early morning to cook some sweets, this she would sell in front of the school fronting the town plaza (ERAMS?). The irony of the situation is that she comes from a family that is well off in her times.
It was never really clear how it came to be, but from what I remember my Spanish-Chinese grandparents were against her marrying into my dad’s family. It was probably from the fact that my dad already has a son from a previous relationship.
My dad is not exactly the favorite of his family either, as a consequence they started their lives in a very modest living condition up in the mountain-farm of Kanjakap - a piece of land that my father was given to till. My elder siblings from my mother (two sisters, and three brothers) were born in the city but brought up in the farm. It was only when I was born that they moved in the town of Kabankalan.
Life was difficult then; we lived in a house made of bamboo and nipa roofing, in a lot that was overrun by weeds and banana trees. Nevertheless, my parents never made us feel wanting as we were fed properly. But the comforts of new clothes, toys or things that we wanted were not readily given.
From selling sweets she opened her restaurant near the Ceres Bus terminal fronting Villa Flora. It was a stroke of fate that she was able to lease it from her kumare Ilyana Adad who owned Villa Flora. Business was brisk selling to passengers boarding the buses plying the northern and southern routes of Negros. She fondly tells me that the restaurant Lucky Boy was named after me. Indeed luck has started to turn as she has gained loyal customers who drove all the way from as far as Bacolod to buy her famous pork asado siopao, or order the crispiest and tastiest lechon stuffed with Tamarind, Lemon Grass, Iba and seasoned with rock salt and pepper corn to give it the distinct salty and sour taste that doesn’t need any seasoning or liver sauce anymore. I remember the rows and rows of lechon that was propped along the wall of the restaurant when the Sinulog festival rolls in early January. I guess that accounts for the fact that everyone in the family was rather hefty and fat. Food was the only thing that my parents never compromised on. Never mind the old shoes, or the hand-me downs from relatives or family friends.
My dad’s turn at luck came as his farm prospered due to the then high price of sugar in the global market. He was able to buy trucks that he used to transport the harvest and lease it out to other farmers who wanted to transport goods across Negros.
Eventually my mother’s family has learned to accept that their daughter can succeed despite the lack of financial support from the very beginning. At that time my mother was running the restaurant as well as opened two retail and wholesale grain stores that sold rice and corn as a staple in the wet market. I remember her waking up early at four in the morning so she can do the grocery for the day as well as opening the stores in the market. She’d stay there personally handling the business with a tiny fan keeping her cool in the often stuffy stall. I learned my lessons in handling business during summer when I go home and was tasked to look over the store. Eventually she ventured into trading and “bulante”, a term used to describe the system of traveling from one town to another bringing and selling essential goods such as rice, sugar, corn.
After a long while my grandmother gave her some land properties to till for coconut and sugar. This she took on and continued to grow the business. She was a shrewd and smart businesswoman. Despite this, she had an inherent distrust in banks and never kept the bulk of her money in the bank, preferring to keep it stashed in an old steel trunk that she carries from one house to another.
With the money that she was able to earn, she initiated and set up the house that we now call our family home. She had a unique arrangement with my dad who kept their finances separate. My dad was responsible for some of the responsibilities such as our education but the maintenance of the house and food has been my mothers’.
Despite all of this, my parents never thought of insurance or saving up for the future when they grow old.
Today we shoulder the burden of those mistakes made.
The years of not minding her health, sacrificing her own comforts, the sessions missed with the doctor for her regular checks. The instances where vacations were put aside to give way to my fathers’ whim and will, the lost opportunities to enjoy herself, this is now coming back to remind us painfully of what she has missed to give us all what we have.
July 2005 she was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. Five years before that she had a stroke that took away her ability to verbally express herself in coherent sentences but she never lost her mental faculty. Despite reminders for them to have themselves checked my parents never did take it seriously. Immortality is just a vitamin pill away.
She never said a word about her pain, she’d complain about discomfort and that was it. On hindsight, knowing her tolerance for extreme pain we should have insisted more for her checks. One night in July 2005 she woke up my father and calmly told him that she’d want to check herself in the hospital as she was feeling discomfort in her abdomen. After a series of tests and CT Scans, Ultrasounds they were able to diagnose that my mother has Stage 4 cancer of the pancreas with mestasis to the lung area.
You know those thoughts that it can never happen to you? That it always happens to someone else but not your own? Well, it does. I won’t go through the usual cliché about how devastated we were, or how it changed a lot of things in our lives. The point of the narration is how strong my mother was throughout these trying times.
Fast forward to July 7, 2006 almost a year from her diagnosis. My mother’s admitted to the hospital for complications resulting from failure of the liver. Her abdomen is distended due to some complications that her system can not dispel the liquid she is taking in, she can’t process solid food anymore and is fed by tubes that crawl the length of her arm. Whatever liquid food that we feed her is automatically suctioned off by an NGT that goes through her nose, larynx and reaches all the way to her stomach. We can’t even give hers strong pain killers to manage her pain as it will cause her to temporarily get rid of pain but will cause her liver to shutdown completely and induce a comma almost immediately. We are not yet ready to make that decision – but the family has come to an agreement that if and when she is already in extreme pain we will administer the pain killers – the consequence of which we will not be able to communicate with her fully conscious.
Up to this time, she is still the Strong One, holding on to life as she knows that we are selfishly not ready to say goodbye. She is the Strong One enduring the pain until such time that we are brave enough to let go of her.
I remember our conversations where she says she wants to go on a vacation, to go to places where she’s never been. To see the world after thinking the world of us. Unfortunately, in this particular adventure, she’d be having all the fun while we are left thinking of how happy she’d be in her grand vacation.
Time to board the plane Ma, I’ll catch up with you at one point. Have a grand vacation.
It was never really clear how it came to be, but from what I remember my Spanish-Chinese grandparents were against her marrying into my dad’s family. It was probably from the fact that my dad already has a son from a previous relationship.
My dad is not exactly the favorite of his family either, as a consequence they started their lives in a very modest living condition up in the mountain-farm of Kanjakap - a piece of land that my father was given to till. My elder siblings from my mother (two sisters, and three brothers) were born in the city but brought up in the farm. It was only when I was born that they moved in the town of Kabankalan.
Life was difficult then; we lived in a house made of bamboo and nipa roofing, in a lot that was overrun by weeds and banana trees. Nevertheless, my parents never made us feel wanting as we were fed properly. But the comforts of new clothes, toys or things that we wanted were not readily given.
From selling sweets she opened her restaurant near the Ceres Bus terminal fronting Villa Flora. It was a stroke of fate that she was able to lease it from her kumare Ilyana Adad who owned Villa Flora. Business was brisk selling to passengers boarding the buses plying the northern and southern routes of Negros. She fondly tells me that the restaurant Lucky Boy was named after me. Indeed luck has started to turn as she has gained loyal customers who drove all the way from as far as Bacolod to buy her famous pork asado siopao, or order the crispiest and tastiest lechon stuffed with Tamarind, Lemon Grass, Iba and seasoned with rock salt and pepper corn to give it the distinct salty and sour taste that doesn’t need any seasoning or liver sauce anymore. I remember the rows and rows of lechon that was propped along the wall of the restaurant when the Sinulog festival rolls in early January. I guess that accounts for the fact that everyone in the family was rather hefty and fat. Food was the only thing that my parents never compromised on. Never mind the old shoes, or the hand-me downs from relatives or family friends.
My dad’s turn at luck came as his farm prospered due to the then high price of sugar in the global market. He was able to buy trucks that he used to transport the harvest and lease it out to other farmers who wanted to transport goods across Negros.
Eventually my mother’s family has learned to accept that their daughter can succeed despite the lack of financial support from the very beginning. At that time my mother was running the restaurant as well as opened two retail and wholesale grain stores that sold rice and corn as a staple in the wet market. I remember her waking up early at four in the morning so she can do the grocery for the day as well as opening the stores in the market. She’d stay there personally handling the business with a tiny fan keeping her cool in the often stuffy stall. I learned my lessons in handling business during summer when I go home and was tasked to look over the store. Eventually she ventured into trading and “bulante”, a term used to describe the system of traveling from one town to another bringing and selling essential goods such as rice, sugar, corn.
After a long while my grandmother gave her some land properties to till for coconut and sugar. This she took on and continued to grow the business. She was a shrewd and smart businesswoman. Despite this, she had an inherent distrust in banks and never kept the bulk of her money in the bank, preferring to keep it stashed in an old steel trunk that she carries from one house to another.
With the money that she was able to earn, she initiated and set up the house that we now call our family home. She had a unique arrangement with my dad who kept their finances separate. My dad was responsible for some of the responsibilities such as our education but the maintenance of the house and food has been my mothers’.
Despite all of this, my parents never thought of insurance or saving up for the future when they grow old.
Today we shoulder the burden of those mistakes made.
The years of not minding her health, sacrificing her own comforts, the sessions missed with the doctor for her regular checks. The instances where vacations were put aside to give way to my fathers’ whim and will, the lost opportunities to enjoy herself, this is now coming back to remind us painfully of what she has missed to give us all what we have.
July 2005 she was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. Five years before that she had a stroke that took away her ability to verbally express herself in coherent sentences but she never lost her mental faculty. Despite reminders for them to have themselves checked my parents never did take it seriously. Immortality is just a vitamin pill away.
She never said a word about her pain, she’d complain about discomfort and that was it. On hindsight, knowing her tolerance for extreme pain we should have insisted more for her checks. One night in July 2005 she woke up my father and calmly told him that she’d want to check herself in the hospital as she was feeling discomfort in her abdomen. After a series of tests and CT Scans, Ultrasounds they were able to diagnose that my mother has Stage 4 cancer of the pancreas with mestasis to the lung area.
You know those thoughts that it can never happen to you? That it always happens to someone else but not your own? Well, it does. I won’t go through the usual cliché about how devastated we were, or how it changed a lot of things in our lives. The point of the narration is how strong my mother was throughout these trying times.
Fast forward to July 7, 2006 almost a year from her diagnosis. My mother’s admitted to the hospital for complications resulting from failure of the liver. Her abdomen is distended due to some complications that her system can not dispel the liquid she is taking in, she can’t process solid food anymore and is fed by tubes that crawl the length of her arm. Whatever liquid food that we feed her is automatically suctioned off by an NGT that goes through her nose, larynx and reaches all the way to her stomach. We can’t even give hers strong pain killers to manage her pain as it will cause her to temporarily get rid of pain but will cause her liver to shutdown completely and induce a comma almost immediately. We are not yet ready to make that decision – but the family has come to an agreement that if and when she is already in extreme pain we will administer the pain killers – the consequence of which we will not be able to communicate with her fully conscious.
Up to this time, she is still the Strong One, holding on to life as she knows that we are selfishly not ready to say goodbye. She is the Strong One enduring the pain until such time that we are brave enough to let go of her.
I remember our conversations where she says she wants to go on a vacation, to go to places where she’s never been. To see the world after thinking the world of us. Unfortunately, in this particular adventure, she’d be having all the fun while we are left thinking of how happy she’d be in her grand vacation.
Time to board the plane Ma, I’ll catch up with you at one point. Have a grand vacation.
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