Women write on love, grief and legacy

(Conclusion)

When Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, my editor at Sunday Inquirer Magazine, gave me a copy of the all-women anthology “First Draft,” I immediately turned to her essays—all filled with the love she shared with late husband Vic.

“Vic said it not only with flowers but with every imaginable and unimaginable proof of undying love,” says Lorna. On their first date, the couple danced the slow drag. “He wasn’t crazy about dancing, but … he was crazy about me.”

On Vic’s birthday in Boracay, his love literally enabled his wife to learn to float. “[He] gently led me [to the sea], telling me to … untense … imagine myself a leaf, simply let go and enjoy myself. And I did—timidly and nervously at first, with Vic supporting my back, and then he set me free.”

During Typhoon Ondoy, Vic was out of town. Lorna was home alone, praying that their son and his family were safe. Vic could not contact his wife so he called Tina Monzon Palma, “on the air that terrible evening, for help … I assured friends weeks later … that I never went missing, mahal na mahal lang talaga ako ng asawa ko.”

READ: Wise women write about aging, money and family

For wordsmith Elizabeth “Babeth” Lolarga, marriage “may not be soul-lifting romance, but … it works!” Both spouses immersed in their own work; they share responsibilities, and hubby’s actions show how much he cares for his wife.

“Housework is not my metier,” says Babeth. “I’d rather try my hand at writing an epic poem than cook family meals daily or—horrors!—go to market and mentally plan a week’s menu … He does those so well.” And she knows how lucky she is to be married to him.

Babeth faces life’s vicissitudes wryly—her accounts of knee operations and eating away grief made me laugh and cry in solidarity.

In times of pain, my friend Karina Bolasco’s faith remains stalwart. When her husband Mario died, “it was my faith that served as the reservoir from which I drew strength, not for myself alone but for my entire family as well. Grief was scary, decimating … Disoriented, I held on to my faith.”

Karina goes to daily Mass, “a respite … when hidden thoughts … surface … being at Mass is … being in a freewheeling conversation with a God who listens. Always.”

A veteran publisher, Karina says of her first visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1988: “I felt as though I were floating along aisles of beautiful books from all over the world; it was like being at the center of the universe, the repository of stories and ideas … in the Mecca of book believers.”

I pray to be fit enough to join Karina there in 2025, when the Philippines is guest of honor.When Edna Manlapaz, legendary Ateneo English professor, writes about dining on Ma Mon Luk noodles with her mother, I remember my late mom who bought these by the potful. And I concur when Edna says of her father: “Our temperament is basically the same, both of us driven by a barely flexible work ethic which, whatever its pitfalls, ensures professional success.”

Edna faces mortality with grace, even designing a room in which to face death. Meanwhile, “remain as alert as possible, for as long as possible,” she advises. “Keep your mind active and agile. Read. Watch films. Play bridge. Do crossword puzzles. Go to shows. Meet friends, old and new.”

“Long past scheduled retirement, I continue to work,” says media crusader Melinda Quintos de Jesus. “I have allowed myself to be drawn to new tasks, new learnings and new goals … But [this] is tempered … by the acceptance that the work we begin need not be finished in our lifetime to be of value, that we begin, if only to open up possibilities for those who come after us.”

“When a cycle in one’s life ends,” says the late Gilda Cordero-Fernando, the soul of this anthology, “one sits, lost in a sea of [things] … wondering what that was all about. Did the stages of one’s life achieve what they were supposed to?

“But like the granaries in the old bible and the testament of the fairy tales, even while the bodega is emptying, it is being filled again … not junk that it is filling with, but love.”

“First Draft: Personal Essays by Ten Women” is available at www.tahananbooks.ph. Contact 8813-7165 or 0916 3837238.