Ka-Blog!

The Dumale-Villanueva families buried our dear
Manang-Inang-Auntie-Lola Nena last Tuesday, September 12. Her years outnumbered her children,
grandchildren and great grandchildren. And that is saying a lot.
       My Auntie Nena was the eldest of eight and has outlived
three of them. While working at the San
Jose City Public, Uncle Imong (Benjamin Sr.), who was then the marketplace
toughie, saw and  kissed her for no apparent reason. With the family’s reputation at stake, they
had to be married.
       She married under conservative pretexts but auntie Nena was
modern in the sense that she did not silently suffer her husband’s other
girlfriends. I distinctly remember Kuya
Robert’s amused narration of how Auntie Nena loudly announced herself as “the
real Mrs. Dumale” in Uncle Imong’s office with his rumored girlfriend cowering
behind a cabinet.
       Despite having married early and having kids of her own,
Auntie Nena became her younger siblings’ parent when they were orphaned
early. She braved the hardships of the
postwar years raising a young family with her farmer-merchant of a
husband. Well, it was actually two
families merged into one. My father and
his two younger brothers grew up with their nephews as playmates, coworkers and
partners in crime. It was her sad duty
to send her sisters to live with relatives so they could stay in school. It was her pain to see her young brothers
work from dawn ‘til dusk, braving the perils of darkness and ill-intentioned
men in unheard of places to keep body and soul together. It was her sorrow to
part with her siblings and children who flew and sailed abroad to better their
lot in life.
       Even when her siblings and children grew up and had families
of their own, Auntie Nena never ceased to be everyone’s parent. As far as I can remember, she had been our
succor of last resort. When we needed
money or we had trouble in the family, it had always been Auntie Nena who had
the most initiative to make things right. She could be incredibly wealthy one day and be dirt poor the next. That’s because she never keeps the money to
herself. She used to give me fare money
whenever I come visit her. As a kid I
came to expect my regular crisp Peso notes from her every Christmas
season. Her house had always been an
evacuation center of sorts, the retreat of the troubled and the needy. I don’t remember her house ever been quiet or
without visitors, be it at Nichols, Ireneville or Jackilouville.
       Truth to tell, I don’t remember all my cousins’ names by
her, much less my nieces, nephews and grandchildren. I seldom see most of them, having migrated to
different States and Protectorates in America and in Europe. I
am continuously amazed and pissed at the same time when people who are older
than I greet me as “Lolo” (grandfather) whenever I visit their Sucat home.
       Even without the gifts, the money and the food, Auntie Nena
is such a joy to visit. In the last few
years—weak, deaf and with unintelligible speech—the long travels just to pay
her a visit were worth it because she perked up whenever she saw us. She always asked all sorts of questions. She never forgot my wife’s name and always
asked whenever she did not come. 
       There were comparatively less tears shed during her wake and
burial. There were no theatrical
wailings common in other Filipino families’ wakes. In fact, right after the burial, we filled up
a large Chinese restaurant in BF Parañaque. There were nearly two hundred people in there, mothered by the woman we
just buried in a sun-kissed plot beside tall trees and a pond. We ate until we all felt like bursting and we
laughed at every excuse.
       It wasn’t callousness. We just did what felt right. We
do not know anything about self-imposed observance of grief. I know this may sound patronizing, but Auntie
Nena is best remembered with smiles, laughter, food and love.
       Her long and well-lived life deserved nothing else.
       Auntie, maraming
salamat po.