Story about my Grandmother (Part 2): Grace After Grief

I never knew my grandfather. He died a year before I was born. The only grandchild he ever met was my aunt's first born, Janjan. My Lola loved to talk about Lolo though. He seemed like someone who my brothers and I would enjoy having a drink with.

He was someone who loved my grandmother very much despite her stern ways. He loved life and all the simple pleasures it gave, apparently to the point where he died in his sleep because of his love for the bawal (unallowed): He loved tobacco, humba (fatty pork with soysauce), nilagang baka (beef soup), nokus (squid) and hipon (broiled shrimps), things that he used to enjoy that at present, would make my grandmother's arthritic knees shudder into oblivion 😂.

He was a tailor like my grandmother. In fact, that's actually how they met. He was five years her senior and courted her in secret. He was apparently quite the ladies' man in his time, much to my grandmother's frustration when the more aggressive and liberal ladies tried vying for his attention. And my grandmother, being the brooding, and conservative person that she was, just kept quiet (and probably built up resentment) and loved him anyway.

---

Hard Times Harden People

They got married and had two kids: my aunt Remie followed by my dad. When asked about the dynamics of their marriage, my grandma would describe how they were products of their time and financial situation. My grandparents could only earn so much from their wages as tailors, and even though both contributed, their wages were only enough to pay the rent, keep the house, put food on the table and not much on anything else.

My grandmother, despite married, living separately form her original family and a mother to two, was still pressured to send money to her dad for another several years. After she started refusing, or in other words what our generation would call "putting up boundaries", she was excommunicated by her dad for two whole years. Whenever she visited her parents, her dad would shut her out, not talk to her and refuse her his blessing every time.

This went on for quite a while until my great grandpa had an unfortunate near-death incident which made him broke down in front of her when my grandma finally found him.

I guess their conditions at that time are what inspired both my aunt and my dad to take education on their own terms. Both of them were academically proficient at school, became scholars whenever they saw the opportunity to, always ended up in the honor rolls every school year, looked for ways to gain a side income or cut educational costs by being working students and all the while helped around with chores and sewing work at home.

One of my grandmother's early recalls, was when my dad was still a struggling student with holes in his shoes. She would feel bad about not having enough money to buy him new ones. When my dad wanted to buy some mirienda ("afternoon snacks"), he'd offer his meager savings, ones he earned by doing lettering work at school, as contribution to buy sweet bread on the nearby bakeshop.

I guess those memories held a lot of weight for my grandmother since she kept recalling them every now and then these days, and she'd never miss out on telling us how we should be grateful and thankful that we didn't have to experience the same kind of difficulty my dad and my aunt did.

---

Grace After Grief

Anyone who knew my grandmother now would paint her as a devout Catholic, who talked about the Lord and His Mother whenever appropriate. Her sensibilities are easily rattled whenever my brothers and I make below the belt curses from the most petty of situations. "In Jesus' Name!" was her favorite line.

But the thing is, most people who meet my grandmother don't know that there were times in her life where she wasn't always that true to her faith. I guess that's how it is for the majority of people.
Let's recall that she started out as someone who was very passionate about her religion in her youth. Over time, with the piling of adulthood and responsibilities, a lot of things in between, really did make things blurry and at the same time turned her faith lukewarm.

The situation is not that far from the times people experience to date. Once we get caught in the rat race and demands of life, it's so easy to want to be in control all the time. The only difference I observed in most people my age I guess is that we see achievement, and purpose and life fulfillment as the end goal, whereas my grandmother thought only of getting through week by week as her end goal. Majority of the millennial generation seemingly are privileged in this aspect to be able to set ambitions like these, where we were not as limited by circumstance as the boomer generation were.

The biggest blow to my grandmother's faith, the one that really was the last straw was when my grandfather died. He only went to nap one time just after he and my grandma were planning a celebration for my father for finally passing the civil engineers' board exam, and he never woke up. He fell off the bench where he slept and then people realized he wasn't breathing. What was supposedly a happy celebration turned into wailing.

That event really broke my grandma. She became an alcoholic for four straight years, after she got widowed. At that time, my aunt was already living at her husband's house and my dad was living in Cebu. She couldn't handle the loneliness at home, so she drank, sometimes alone and most times with nearby conductors and her younger nieces and nephews who were sent to check up on her.

I could only imagine her spiraling, and the grief and guilt which haunted her all those years. I've always known my grandmother and her abrasive tendencies, my mom and I both know that at home, but it was difficult to imagine her anguish all those years in our previous house.

So what happened Rox? A miracle happened, that's what, or probably the closest thing to a miracle if you were as skeptical as I was.

There was this woman in the neighborhood, who started taking notice of my grandma. She was part of the local parish, and was also a Charismatic member of the Roman Catholic church. She started visiting my grandma regularly, almost everyday in fact, much to my grandmother's annoyance. She'd invite her to church or listen to the Bible, or just talked to her when all of the neighborhood basically shunned my drunkard grandmother at that time. The woman was often already scolded by her own family members for talking and befriending my grandmother. She never stopped, and now that I think of it, my brothers and I are indebted to her. After months of convincing, my grandmother relented.

My grandma started going with the woman to church, but just like any alcoholic or person who felt lost, she felt like she didn't belong in that group of people. I could tell how it was far from easy because my grandmother's pride is not something that could be easily lowered (I know because I got that from her and my dad), so I could only imagine the amount of humility my grandmother had to muster up to show her face in front of those church members after gaining the reputation of being the neighborhood drunkard. The temptation to leave and give up was there but she went through with it anyway.

She showed up. That was the only thing that was required of her: to show up and to keep showing up, and that eventually healed her. And when she finally became regularized at the church, the most unexpected thing happened: the woman who evangelized her died.

Apparently, she had already been carrying a terminal illness for years and no one knew. But she died the moment my grandma made her way back to the Lord, as if that was her last mission on Earth.

Sometimes I wish that woman lived long enough to see the legacy she left on Earth. What is a legacy, though? From a musical I learned that "it's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see". She'd see how my grandma leads prayer meetings now, and prays the longest, and most earnest during our nightly family prayers. She'd see how my grandma is more gentle now, with people and with animals. She'd see how much she loves her grandchildren and prays for them all the time, and only drinks Sangria these days less than moderately, and when the budget allows her to 😅.

The Lord is closest to the broken, and I found it the most true with my grandma's story. It is the sick who needs the Doctor and not the ones who are well. The Good Shepherd would leave the 99 and go after the one lost sheep, and damn was my grandmother lost for a long time.

---

A bit of a commentary no one asked but still would like to add:

When people ask me about faith, and/or Christianity. I could never give anyone a straight answer. But I have to admit that there was a time in my life when skepticism and nihilism would get the best of me, and even turned me into someone I didn't want to be. I can't claim it to be "intelligence" or "free thinking" that came with an unhealthy pressure to not be called a "sheep", or maybe there was just a part of me that loved to spite the self-righteous societies and turned to novel beliefs para ma-iba to be "edgy", but if I was REALLY being honest, like not afraid to be judged for my vulnerability honest, it was more on the pride I possessed that came with the identity of being "intelligent" and "free-thinking".

My skepticism about the Bible and Christianity stemmed from my previous list of disappointments, how it couldn't answer the existential questions that haunted me then, and I admit there are still questions left unanswered until now.

It was only recently when I was reintroduced to it, and when I started finally liking myself for the first time in a long time. And it was not because of something I did or something I earned, or something I worked tooth and nail for, but it was because of something I was given -- GRACE.

At the end of the day, it toppled all the beliefs I had about myself in the past, like a house of cards: all those beliefs that I had to earn to deserve respect, happiness, contentment, love, and even the simplest of all, peace of mind, that I had to force myself to embody the idealized 21st Century mold of the STRONG AND INDEPENDENT WOMAN. But it requires balancing on a very thin line between being that kind of persona and believing that I have to consistently and constantly GIRL BOSS my way through life, in order to appear tethered or held in place, and "deserving" morsels of peace, which is a very exhausting thing to do.

That kind of thinking only got me so far since it only took a pandemic and an economic crisis to shatter the illusion I made for myself and lead me to a near similar spiral down my alcoholic grandma's road.

All of this came with the important lesson I have been told for the majority of my life, but didn't bat an eye on it at that time since I didn't find it significant. But now I finally came to understand that it is currently and will probably be the hardest lesson I will have to internalize starting now: Grace is not something earned, it is given.

You don't need to be your own version of success to receive grace. You don't need to have a six digit salary, or own an island or have a bay watch model body. All you really need to do is to receive, and with that my friend, the only adversary you have to face is yourself.

About The Protean Creator:

_{Roxanne Marie is the twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.}

_{She is a chemical engineer by profession, pole-dancer and blogger by passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Currently, she works as a science and research instructor in her hometown, Tagbilaran City, all the while documenting her misadventures, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial here on Hive.}

_{If you like her content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. It would be an honor to have this post reblogged as well. Also, don't forget to follow her to be updated with her latest posts.}