3 MIN READ
By IVAN EMIL LABAYNE
www.nordis.net
Other letters speak of memories, among other wonderful cliches: “family remembrances,” “You will always be in our hearts,” among other things I can no longer remember. But what I remember is this: some tombs don’t have tombstones; some tombstones don’t have the typical engravings; others were just *crudely* painted, but maybe it was done by the family members themselves, not only, or not exactly because they couldn’t afford some professional service, but because they wanted to have a literal hand on the resting place of the loved ones.
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In Pam’s grave, these words: You are a hero to us. In the event friends organized to honor her, days after she passed on, a friend’s message centered on how most people take pride in having lawyer-friends, doctor-friends, farmer-friends, clerk-friends, but this friend beams with pride at having met someone like Pam, being friends with someone like Pam, a student journalist, a layout artist, a red warrior volunteering to do medical work in the communities, a photojournalist, a red warrior. That Pam will be in our hearts is a given; that she’s a hero to us has to be put out there, in grave letters in a grave she shares with plants and other forms of living.
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We friends who visited, with the kind and effortful guidance of our Baguio friends—all of us part of the student publication, four of us six having served as editors-in-chief consecutively—noticed the growth of grasses, covering, hiding Pam’s grave. The initial reaction was that it’s unsightly, it has to be cut off, Pam’s grave has to be in clear view. The Baguio friend who guided us to where Pam is—Baguio’s public cemetery is labyrinthine up and down, perhaps addling even the city’s resident—joked—when you meet him, there’s a good chance you won’t say goodbye without him quipping—that went something like, Hanggang ngayon Pam, nagtatago ka pa rin. We found him anyway. Friends find friends; even when they are no longer breathing, or even when they have already been embraced by the soil, by the earth, by stubborn shrubberies.
Having returned to Manila, my partner-friend offered an alternative beauty: what if we let the grasses be? She gets it, “how we usually remove the plants around graves as a way to pay our respects,” she gets it but she kind of “doesn’t want to do that, I just want to imagine that among those plants a flower will bloom and the plants themselves protect her,” also, how Pam’s body “nourished those plants.” I get her. I remember Pam, with another Baguio friend, taking care of rosemaries, and dills, and basils in small pots, in their lovely Trancoville home. Is this memory correct? Was it in Aurora Hill? We had dinner there one time, pasta and some drinks, and then some Inglorious Basterds. I remember another friend taking notes from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Pam’s book. The children will be the children of many, not just their parents’; they will grow and then go back to the earth that is their different mother. Pam has taken care of dills and rosemaries and basils and oreganos; she still does today, and the plants reciprocate by embracing her.
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From Edel Garcellano’s Ficcion: may mga naaninag ang tauhan, si Elias (kabilang-mukha ni Simon? kapwa sa nobela ni Edel at sa Noli at Fili ni Rizal): “Ilang ulit na ba niyang naisaalang-alang ang anyo ng kanyang pagkamatay? Noong hindi pa man siya nagagawi rito at dumaranas ng isang pagpapasakit, parang isang pangitain na gumitaw sa kanya ang nabubulok niyang katawang sinagpang ng lupa, at sa lupang yaon ay tumubo ang magagandang bulaklak” (nasa page 165). What cutting grasses will Pam help nourish? What plants would linger with Pam’s rest? What growth will take place, what flowers will bloom?
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From Maikling Imbestigasyon ng Isang Mahabang Pangungulila, also by Edel, towards the end: “Balang araw, tuluyan ding magagapi ang mga Norteamerikano, at kung hindi ko makikita ang katapusang ito, ang mga langgam sa lupa ay gagapang sa aking puntod at sasabihin ang lahat sa akin….” Next month perhaps, on the second year of her passing, friends will visit Pam and share this and that news: a friend’s niece growing teeth, a friend’s promotion, another friend’s growing kids. A year after, a different set of news: perhaps weddings, commitments to the movement, finishing an MA thesis, continuing political involvements. A decade or more and the ants will join us, the friends who remain, and we will tell Pam that what she took part in remains alive and fighting, nearing victoriousness, magagapi ang mga pumatay sa kanya, at siya ay tatawa ng kanyang Pamelang tawa, open-mouth and all, maririnig sa hangin, maaamoy sa titingkayad na dahon, sa lumalagong damo. # nordis.net
