Reflections of a Guilty Son

In January 2012, I got the phone call that all migrants dread. Without being told, I immediately knew my mother had died. The time of the call, midnight, using a cell phone to call long distance and all the minute details that could only be a family death were evident.

In what seems like a long time, but was just probably a minute, the screaming in my head was silenced by the side that has seen much tragedy. I come from the Philippines; we have all experienced misfortunes in abundance. When I calmed down, I gently told my wife we would return the call in the morning, brushed my teeth and went to sleep without preamble.

The following day, after a long phone call made away from my children, in the hotel bathroom, I found out the circumstances of her death. Suffering from dementia, she was unable to find her way home. She walked past the village, to the city, out of it and to the next town, many miles away. She walked under a scorching tropical sun with no water and no idea where to go.

She somehow ended up on a solitary village on the edges of sugarcane fields, near a beach where we once went when I was a child. And in what could have been a very long, lonely, confusing and terrifying night for her, she stayed there unable to take her medication, on her own, in pain, disorientated and freezing.

She was found dead the next day, more than 24 hours after she got lost.

Unable to scream and grieve, I spent the next day on tour in London with my children. We did the usual touristy things; London Eye, parks, garden, shops. They were blissfully unaware that their “Lola” who they have heard so much of, talked to on the phone but have not met, was dead.

On our return home, we sat them down. We told them what had happened. My wife and I were always frank about things with our children, and death is something we talked to them about. We answered their questions and they were predictably sad, as grandchildren would in moments like these. However, I was aware that, having not met her was good for them. They had fewer memories, especially not those of an elderly woman suffering the indignity of dementia. Memories are our salvation, but they are also the ones that cause us grief.

I did not have the luxury of pausing to gather my thoughts. I was the eldest child and everyone would look up to me for support, including my father. Philippine funerals are extravagant, dramatic events; I had much to think of. There were relatives to house and feed for the usual two weeks’ wake, flowers to buy, coffin colour to choose, funeral plot to find and hundreds of mundane details which I suspect were meant to occupy the living to distract them from the death.

I will always be grateful to VSO for understanding my circumstance. The organisation lived up to its character, as that of an understanding and humane organisation. Colleagues commiserated and I was given two weeks off from work to fly home and attend to my family, who by then were slowly trickling to our island by boat, busses, planes, jeepneys and what ever transport they can manage to get onto from all over the country.

Unfortunately or fortunately for me, there was a plane delay. I was stuck at Heathrow airport, unsure if I had to go back to Colchester and when could I fly out of the UK. Two days late, and after two plane rides and many other vehicles; I arrived home numb.  Because of the delay, I managed to sleep in a hotel at the airport. Two weeks of a funeral wake is very much waking time.

When I arrived I needed to tend to the living. I did not go straight to see the coffin; I greeted my family and friends. I asked for coffee and in a moment indicative of how insulated I was from the pain, I forgot about the coffin and placed the mug on top of it. A nervous hush overcome those in the house but they understood how far I was down the emotional rabbit hole. 

The two weeks went with much out drama. Birth, weddings and death were opportunities for family reunions, a time of settling old scores, grievances and disagreements. Luckily, at the wake, there was less of it than at other times. My relations were all generally well behaved. We had to endure silly traditions, which I again suspect were meant to make us uncomfortable to distract us from our grief, and which they did. We can’t brush our hair inside the house; we had to go out onto the streets for that. We can’t shower and a rota had to be organised for going to relatives houses to wash. We can’t sweep, so we had to pick up all the rubbish which was a lot because of the non-stop eating to keep people awake at nights.

Frankly, I can’t remember much of the two weeks. But three things will forever be etched in my memory.

First, a conversation with my father, speculating if my mother had a lucid moment, and decided to end it all to spare us the years of care, a fortune in medication for an illness that can’t be cured which she would not recover from. I will always partly wonder if, like she always did, make a motherly sacrifice.

Second, the hearse ride to the cemetery. I sat beside my father in the hearse and the kilometre trip felt like an eternity. I was acutely aware of the silence and the feeling of drowning, a heavy chest, as if my body was very heavy. It took much effort to stand and keep my composure.

Third, confronting the elephant in the village, dementia. There were whispers about my mother’s condition. She was called the crazy lady. I did not hold a grudge against people in my village. We come from a small provincial city and people nose into each others lives. It is their way of showing that they care about you enough to gossip about you to others. I told them she was not crazy, she was ill and that it could happen to anyone. We should show compassion to others who could be in the same condition. It is not easy for them and their families.

When the fanfare was over, we went home to an empty silent house. Initially no one spoke, but I would have none of it. So we planned a mountain trip to wash from the streams, get away from it all and breathe fresh air, hopefully to get a bit of perspective. We escaped to the mountains the following day. We couldn’t let this spoil my father’s birthday celebration. We had already lost a mother, the best we can do is to make the surviving parent happy, but of course hard as you try, emotions are not taps, they can’t just be switched on and off when they over-flow.

I have not grieved since then, nor will I know when. We all grieve but we do it in our own ways. I am the eldest child, brought up by a tough mother who once broke two wooden rulers on my hand to encourage me to learn my alphabet at five years old. She was old school and I did not hold these disciplining against her. I left a dusty sugarcane filled island to get an education from the best institutions in the world and travelled many continents with a sense of mission. Two broken rulers and a sore hand is a small price to pay, thanks to her.

I had to see the family emotionally and financially through to her death. I was occupied more with the mechanics of the funeral, than my own grieving but I know one day, I will break down. Not today for sure, but when the realisation that her love masquerading as courage, drive, defiance and non-conformity made me who I am today, the emotional dam will burst and I will be reduced to a broken, pitiful state trying to come to terms with my lost.

When most of the things were finally settled or put on hold for the right moment, I went back home to the UK, to my two children and wife. On the plane ride on the way back, I struggled with guilt, of how I left my parents behind to make my mark in the world. I had severed the parental umbilical cord a long time ago to be my own man and have been on a mission to help make the world a little better by working in public health for almost two decades. I know that this is something that made them extremely proud even if I did not become a lawyer or politician. But sadly, the very thing that made them proud took me very far away from them.

I have worked all over the world helping communities address their health problems yet my own mother died; cold, lonely and in pain on a solitary beach. I realised that phone calls, letter, pictures, gifts and money sent regularly over the years were not enough and could not have substituted for my presence. I cared for others, yet I did not physically care for them as often as I could have. The bitter ironies of choice and the misfortune that comes with sacrifice will cast a shadow over me for a long time.

Fortunately, a much bigger shadow, her character, is dominating me at the moment; enough to drown my grief and guilt. My mother was a proud woman, heir to a glorious tradition of a mountain people with a long history. She was determined and amazingly with grit, sent us all through private schools. After nine graduates from the best schools with the last on track for graduation in two years, her gamble paid off. Her line of 16 brothers and sisters will be the first among our people to have all finished university, an achievement considering that we are only the second generation that is literate.

This is the message of my eulogy. My mother was not one to let misfortunes get in the way of what needs to be done. She was one who would swallow the bitter cups of tea life throws at her and just plough on. She was not one who is big on wasting time on grieving, even at her own funeral.

I know the pain will never go away, because I had a strong bond with my mother. But if there is something she taught me is that we should not abandon courage, for it will not abandon us. As a child who slugged fire wood on her head to trek down the mountain to get an education and a new life, these words meant something coming from a woman like her. It is testimony of courage and strength of character.

My mother also believed in giving back. She believed in the idea of our collective humanity and the importance of the village, not just as a place, but a community of people caring for each other. She believed that is the only way to survive, by caring for each other. I can’t be with her anymore, but I can still help others going through the same ordeal, if only to have a few days more with their loved ones. I can still help others to at least hold their parents hands and hopefully witness their death surrounded by loved ones.

So I now do what I do, out of guilt definitely, but also to honour the memory of a person who firmly believed that every moment of kindness that cost you something, is a way of helping make the world a better place. 

In Search of Arnis

I must admit, I was not enthused with Arnis while growing up in the central Philippine island of Negros; an island which I lately discovered was home to two masters of Arnis lineages. On rare occasions I witnessed it got demonstrated, my impression was of a fun, generally silly but infective fighting technique. I assumed that arnisadors will feel naked in a fight without their bastons or knives. If I have to worry about the length of my stick, or the availability of one during a confrontation, then for me, it is not worth the bother.

In retrospect, there were many reasons that influenced my view. Back then, it was not the popular sport that it is today. It was secretive and is taught in few places. Travelling for two hours to attend an hour of training seems not worth the effort. There was also limited drive to endear it to the public. I discovered lately that the proponents of modern Arnis was from the island where I grow up and that of Pekiti Tirsia Kali originated from Panay, my maternal home.  Sadly, these traditions were lost on me back then.

I once saw it exhibited at school. The skinny and pimply teenager who executed the moves was lacking in general appeal. His unpopularity with girls further doomed the art to me. It created the formative view that; arnis is for emaciated boys who can’t get girls because they spent too much time playing with their sticks, the rattan kind that is.

I was, like many in my generation, enamoured and captivated by foreign fighting techniques; Kung-Fu, Karate, Aikido, Judo and grudgingly Taekwondo. How can one, not be beguiled by the charisma of Bruce Lee, the cheekiness of Jacky Chan nor the perfectly rotund buttocks of Jean Claude Van Damme while displaying a split? If it is good enough for them, then they are certainly good enough for me. Later, I found out that Bruce Lee adopted Arnis as the armed fighting component of Jeet Kune Do, an irony perhaps that he has to learn it from a Filipino.

But the grass, as they say, is always green at the other side. To me, Arnis was a denuded, unloved, pitiful hill compared to the tropical greenery that was foreign martial arts. Lately, the exotic nature of Muay Thai and Silat enthralled me to more foreign martial arts, further relegating Arnis to the back of my consciousness as something inferior.

That was, until a few months ago.

For sometime now, I have been reflecting on the fighting techniques I like my children, both girls, to be proficient in. Call it an insurance policy, in an unpredictable world. I like them to be charming when needed and potent when the situation requires. I certainly do not want them to suffer at the hands of any man or woman- hence the need to learn how to fight. I want them to be able to dominate their husbands, as husbands needed to be put in their places everynow and then, either by charm or force.

It is not just a flowery technique I am looking for. I wanted something practical and most importantly, effective in a combat situation. I wanted something unburdened by the need to look great, but by the simplicity of execution. And I want it to be both weapon and non weapon based.  I am of the weapons based persuasion. In an actual fight, somebody with a weapon, even if it is just a rolled magazine, has the upper hand. This paternal musings of children learning to depend themselves led me to reconsider my misguided view of Arnis. It will give them the chance to learn a practical art yet reconnect with their heritage, an added value.

But how does one do this when one live abroad and in my case outside of London, where gyms are a plenty catering to all sorts of martial arts. Ironically, brain drain and global migration came to my rescue. I discovered that a Filipino acquaintance is an Aikido instructor and is also a modern Arnis aficionado certified by the modern Arnis governing body in the Philippines.  Unfortunately, he is not teaching children and I am trying to convince him to do so by forming a charity to make this a reality sometime in the future.

I was then compelled to embrace Arnis, to determine if it truly has merits and good for my children, so I enrolled in the class. In the event my acquaintance, the master, can’t teach children, I have resolved to do it myself, after I know how to do it of course. What to me was a taster turned out to be a revelation. I was indeed misguided about Arnis and was looking to foreign fighting influence for something exciting that was just at my doorsteps.

With anticipation, I attended two sessions during both of which I had to borrow rattan sticks from my instructors and classmates. The master was a kind and funny man, who was patient enough to accept near hopeless cases as myself. The gym was a humble looking place, a disused plant nursery behind a halal shop. Two classes were held on Tuesday every week; an earlier Aikido class after which our merry bunch of father escaping house on a Tuesday evening, huff and puff to our hearts content while pretending to hit each other with a 26 inch tropical vine.

To my surprise, I discovered what most men in their 40s already knew, the painful effects of exercise on an ageing body. What was once a flexible vessel used to cycling 56 kilometres across London daily for 3 years, became a calcified stiff mass that can barely cope up and in much need of rest every 10 minutes. I realised that fatherhood and the regime of an 8-12 hours sedentary work in front of the computer is not a recipe for health. The latter will be the death of me.

I also discovered, to my surprise, Arnis was not what I thought it to be. Arnis is like the ugly duckling that turned out to be a graceful swan of a martial art. It is like the dark skinned village girl you ignored over a chinita. Years later she turned out to be a successful beautiful women living in Paris while the chinita of your youth became; fat, ugly and bitter. The moves were simple yet potent. There is a certain fluidity of motion and I was able to get in touch with the natural rhythm akin to my agrarian upbringing. Arnis is a martial of the masses, for common people, something that suits my temperament well.

With the realisation comes regret, of how I let this unassuming martial art elude me. I could have spent years learning about its intricate moves and intimate contours. I have wasted time by not taking on this art earlier. All is not lost however, by embracing it late in life, I realised that this truly is one of the fighting arts I like my children to master for 10 years.

with modern Arnis master Eric Amada