This is my response to a necrological service for my grandmother who passed away just last month.
Good evening! The family thanks you for sharing the beautiful service with us. And we thank you for your presence here tonight in -- I don't want to say "in our time of grief" because although I am saddened with lola's passing -- I feel that it's a time for us to celebrate her life because she lived the fullest of lives. To start with she married a very handsome and dashing man in my lolo. She gave birth to 7 remarkable individuals, who in one way or another have enriched my life and the lives of others. She saw 16 grandchildren grow up to be somewhat "responsible adults" -- we try our best. And she was around to see 18 great grandchildren who gave her cause to smile, to laugh and to sing.
I have a treasure throve of memories of my lola all of which I will always cherish (for the rest of my life). There's one that I'd like to share with all of you tonight if you will let me. As some of you might know, lola had to undergo an operation sometime in the late eighties. She had to have her cataracts taken out and they found this brilliant opthalmologist. He did such a great job on lola that we started to go see the same doctor. In one of the visits to the doctor we found out that some of my eyelashes grow inward and were causing me some irritation. So every time I'd go for a check-up, Dr. Lapus would take out a few of the stray lashes and if lola happened to be there, our conversation would go something like this:
"Apok, mano ti nagabut ni Dr. Lapus kenka tatta?" (How many lashes did the doctor pull out?). I'd answer "Maybe 6." and then she'd go "Ay apok aya P50 ti maysa." (My goodness, it's P50.00 each!)
If you haven't had the pleasure of having an eyelash pulled out -- I can tell you right now it hurts! Instead of consoling me with "Piman ka pay apok." (Oh my poor child.), my lola was doing maths?! I don't know -- maybe it was the teacher in her or maybe because she was married to an accountant.
I call my sister at least once a week and of course our favorite topic of conversation would be lola -- among others that is. She told me about lola's obsession with Mel Gibson on account of the movie "The Passion". Lola would have all these tidbits of information about Mel Gibson and she would just go on and on -- did you know this or did you know that about him. Ask her how may children he has and where he goes to church and she could tell you. She was, without doubt, Mel Gibson's greatest fan. My eighty-seven year old grandmother was obsessed with a guy 30 or so odd years her junior. How cool was that?
She cracks me up sometimes my lola does. That's one of the things I will miss about her. I will miss her great sense of humor. I will miss listening to her stories about things she read or saw on TV. I will miss her incessant humming as she would invariably do when she was busy with her hands. But most of all I will miss holding her hands. She had the softest hands. She's a great ol' gal. I am so grateful I knew her as a child more so that I got to know her as an adult. I know she's somewhere over the rainbow but I loved her dearly and I will miss her even more.