Monthly Archive

After battling with Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade, my dearest Mamang passed away peacefully on January 21 in Guimaras Island.  Mother of my mom, Mamang spent time with my family in Las Pinas when I was still a young boy and so the happiest memories I have of my childhood would always have her.  She made the best tocino, sewed my elementary school uniform, brought me to church, and even tagged me along to El Shaddai’s Friday gathering in Bacoor.  Oh she was just a dear grandmother who despite not having the luxuries of life knew how to take care of her dear grandchildren.  In 1994, before she had the first signs of the disease, the last thing she gave me was this green t-shirt on which was written "Jesus Reigns" from the Christian church in Iloilo where she received the Lord.  In the same year and in the same church, I gave my life to the Lord and have never regretted doing so. 

It was not easy seeing her succumb to Alzheimer’s later on.  The encounters were rather funny but heartbreaking also.  In 2004, at the last instance that I saw her, she called me her classmate and my mom her teacher.  She said she was waiting for her father to arrive in the afternoon.  She would even scold people at home for stealing her underwear.  She was very healthy nevertheless.  In her last few months, the family decided to transfer her from Iloilo to Guimaras as her condition was already deteriorating.  She no longer had the ability to speak and merely mumbled as if a child.  But in the most amazing of moments, she would be heard singing worship songs to God.  Or calling her children to come home even.  At her last minute, she was heard to say "Nanay, Nanay". 

Mamang was not a perfect woman.  She had her own troubles and mistakes that had lasting repecussion on the entire family and it is only now that I am learning of such things.  Maybe it was because they hid such things from us the young ones.  But face them we have to.  And now, they no longer matter.  For the Lord has already made her a brand new creation, the old has gone and the new has come. 

The legacy that Mamang has left me personally is never material for after all our family was not affluent.  Mamang was a good role model to me of what "care" was all about.   

The Lord called back Mamang at 78, two weeks before she would have celebrated her 79th birthday.  The entire family is at peace knowing that she is in the presence of the Almighty.  She received the Lord and even served in the ministry some years before developing the disease.  There will come a day when indeed death shall be no more and all there would be is restoration of what was lost.  That will be the day when I get to worship the Father with my grandmother.