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FLOWERS IN THE CRYPT

by Catherine Garcia Dario

The woman in the photos was not there when Lolo died. She was not there when they
wrapped up his body and wheeled him to the morgue, nor was she at his wake when
each of us bent to kiss his cold, pallid forehead. On the day the oven lit up, I expected
her to burst through the door, press her face against the glass divider and weep while
Lolo turned into ash. But the funeral went by along with the rosaries and novenas,
plates of puto and pan de sal; the ornate flower arrangements embellished with long,
silk ribbons that read: OUR DEEP CONDOLENCES TO THE GARCIA FAMILY. I waited for
her; I imagined her wearing the silver cocktail dress that we found under Lolo’s bed I
remembered how Lola whipped out her scissors and cut it until it was nothing more but
a pile of shredded satin.
I did not know about Remedios—that was her name, I found out soon after—because
Lolo hid her very well. She was invisible during our beach trips, when he would prop me
on his shoulders and carry me along the shore. He would tell me all his stories about his
hometown, his adventures in the war, my beautiful Lola and how much he loved her. He
told me neither of the house in Antipolo and the cousin I’ve never met, and when I
learned them through the cigarettes and coffee my mother and her sisters medidated
over, I felt Remedios creep up on me like a ghost. I did not know if Lolo really loved us,
and I was not sure if he really knew how.
There was a moment, sixty years ago, in his home in Bataan. My mother told me that
my great-grandma stood at the top of the stairs, hurling at her husband a heavy,
leather suitcase. Lolo sat on the carpet below, listening to her scream that she did not
love him, and she never did. Out his father went and in came another. Lolo’s mother
had been making love to his gangly pieano teacher for years, and it took only the
departure of his father to finally conceive the three stepsiblings that Lolo eventually
grew up with. The next time he saw his father, he was dressed in a black suit and
standing over a bullet-laden corpse. He was twelve-years-old with half-a-dozen more
siblings pressed against another woman’s breast. He said that the woman didn’t even
know of him; he never expected her to.

He left for the war. The year the Japanese broke into his house and took two of
his half-sisters was the same year he found himself outside their military camp,
telling the soldiers that he knew how to cook rice and polish shoes. For nearly
three years he starched uniforms and poured sake, almost collapsing under the
defeaning siren of the air raids that jolted him awake at night. When the war was
over, he went back home to his mother’s house. By that time his piano teacher
had died of lupus, and she sat alone on the wicker chair, scarcely lifting her head
as as she told him: “Oh, Exequiel. Buhay ka pala.”
He could not forget those words; how his mother’s vacant eyes looked past his
broad, stocky shoulders and the moustache that grazed his upper lip. He did not
know her at all, and after she had sold their piano, the only sound in their house
was the tapping of her fingernails against her tocador. When Lolo left for
university, she sat on the bench and watched the bus whisk him away. He did not
say good-bye.
It was in Manila where Lolo started smoking; selling handwritten poems off to
friends and classmates who wanted to please their lovers. He was driftwood—
taking in all sorts of odd jobs to pay for the series of apartments that he rented.
The only way to finish his studies was to wake up at dawn and open the gates of
the university every morning, and he was relentless at it. He became a journalist,
a businessman, a husband. He married Lola two months after he published an
article about the most beautiful girl on campus: Narciza Cortez, 18 years old. 5”1,
curly hair, high cheekbones. Cebuana.
I had often thought that it was their abrupt, passionate romance that led their
marriage to ruin. Lola sold her mother’s jewellery in order to pay for the wedding,
and not until Lolo landed a steady job in the newspaper did they move out of his
sister’s house. He worked nights chasing after politicians, inspecting car
accidents; searching for tapeworms in eateries. He came home to a wife too
young and too eager to bear a man with his ambition. She had pools to swim in
and cigarettes to smoke; she could not wait for the phone to ring and Lolo’s
Mustang to appear in the garage. It was almost inevitable that Remedios would
come along.
I never met the woman, but all I know is that she had long, white legs and copper
hair at the time Lolo hired her to work in his office. I do not know if she was his
secretary or another journalist—Lola never told me, and my mother could not
bring herself to. But as the Polaroid showed, she was tireless on the dance floor
and she loved drinking champagne. She was not as beautiful as Lola, but Lolo
took her to Japan and Switzerland; bought her gowns and diamonds. He took
their children to the beach, and he also propped them on his shoulders as they
walked along the shore.
For years, I harbored a coagulated bitterness inside me. My mother told me of the
moment her car came to a halt at the traffic light and found herself staring at
Lolo’s Mustang humming right next to her. In the backseat was a girl wearing
school uniform, about ten years younger than she was. That evening, when Lolo
sat me on his lap and read to me his copy of Don Quixote, his words seemed to
muck out of his throat. I could not listen; could not look at him. How could I love
somebody who did not know how to love?
I was eleven years old when he got a stroke. The phone call at two in the
morning informed us that Lolo had collapsed in his apartment and suffered
multiple seizures. The CT scan showed that his brain had several distensions and
swelled up his skull like a balloon. I did not shed the lightest tear, not even after
he slipped into a coma. When the drugs had seeped in and he finally opened his
eyes, he was no longer Lolo. He was a vegetable.
He lived for two more years. After months in Medical City, we transferred him
back to his apartment in Makati. My mother converted his bedroom into a
hospital ward, and soon the curtains smelled like antiseptic and drone of the
lifeline monitor filled our ears. I hated visiting him, and I fabricated stories so
that I wouldn’t have to go: piles of homework, a migraine, “Sorry, I think I have
practice for the school play.” I grew numb to the weeping of my family. Lolo was
a shell, and so was I.
On April 19, 2008, I held Lolo for the last time. I remember standing above his
pale, stiff cadaver as the man wiped his face with an acrid-smelling ointment. My
mother insisted that the morgue was too heavy for a young girl like me, but I
insisted on going. I wanted to know what it was like to look at a dead person
enveloped inside a cold casket. I expected Lolo to open his eyes, sit up, stretch
his arms and say, “That was a good nap!” while ambling out of the coffin with a
glow on his face. It was a scary, bizarre idea and when I touched the icy
coldness of his skin, I could not believe that I wanted it to happen.
My family told me to give him a eulogy. I declined. After watching Lola break
down during the wake, I was afraid that the same thing would happen to me. I
listened to my titos and titas recite speeches, quote poetry or movies that Lolo
liked. Friends of his would come up to the podium and repeat themselves with:
“Exequiel was a remarkable man” over and over again. I went home with the
words generous and loving glued to my brain. My chest tightened as I thought
about them.
The post-funeral events kept my family busy. Distant relatives would appear out
of nowhere, carrying baskets of wine or fruit and sending in cards that read: “We
offer our deepest comforts.” So many people came to the house to comfort my
heartsick Lola, and I could not count the number of masses we attended; how
many candles we lit; how many friends that told me that my Lolo was in a better
place. I wondered if Lolo really went to heaven. When I saw the flowers hanging
on the knob of his crypt, I knew that he did.
I was alone when I saw it. There hung a humble bouquet of baby’s breath that
was so small and plain that it disappeared behind the extravagant flower
arrangements that spelled out Lolo’s name. What drew me to it was the small
card attached to the thin ribbon that held the flowers together. There were
names written on it—the names of Lolo’s other children. Below theirs was
Remedios’ signature. Remedios—the woman who did not come to Lolo’s funeral,
the woman wom he had four children with, the woman Lolo loved.
In that moment, I could see Remedios pacing restlessly by her phone, waiting for
somebody to call the moment Lolo got his stroke. I could imagine her hysterical
in the arms of her children, begging to see him as his brain engorged its
memories away. And I could imagine her sneaking timidly into the crypt;
attaching the flowers to the knob and slipping away before anybody could see
her. Remedios mourned alone.
I could have pulled out the flower, torn them up like her cocktail dress and her
letters and her pictures. But I could only think of Lolo, how he carried his other
children the way he carried me as I balanced gingerly on his shoulders when he
walked me down the shore. How he pointed out the horizon, teased me for being
scared, and said, “You can try to swim so far and never touch the sun,”—I
realized that it was not because Lolo did not know how to love, but it was
because he loved too much. I left the flowers there, retreating back to the pew as
my family lit more candles and prayed. I thought of his father walking out the
door, the Japanese soldiers tugging at his sisters’ hair; his nonchalant mother
smoking on the porch. It was then when I stood up, joined my family and prayed.
Physical Cheating
Simply put, physical cheating is the act of being sexually intimate with someone
other than your spouse or significant other. It is one of the most common forms
of cheating. Although physical cheating is common among men and women, it
seems to affect men and women in different ways. Men view physical cheating
as emasculating and a form of physical rejection. Women, on the other hand,
may be more likely to see beyond the physical indiscretion if they perceive that
emotions were not involved.

Emotional Cheating
Emotional cheating may include physical intimacy but not necessarily so.
Emotional cheating may begin as an innocent friendship. Eventually, an
emotional cheater finds himself intimately confiding in the person, sharing
thoughts, dreams and an emotional closeness that would normally be reserved
for his mate. In some ways, emotional cheating is more crippling to a
relationship than physical cheating. With physical cheating, the cheater may
still feel emotionally connected to his partner and may only be seeking to fulfill
a sexual fantasy. With emotional cheating, however, the cheater's heart may no
longer be in the relationship.

Cyber Cheating
With the popularity of the Internet, cyber cheating is becoming a more
common problem among couples. Cyber cheating can come in a variety of
forms. Cyber cheating includes Internet pornography, online dating and flirting
with other people on social networking sites. Cyber cheating is harder to catch
than other forms of cheating. It requires the couple to have access to one
another's computer passwords and to pay close attention to conversations
each person is having on the Internet.

What Is Forgiveness?
Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate
decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a
person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they
actually deserve your forgiveness.
Just as important as defining what forgiveness is, though, is
understanding what forgiveness is not. Experts who study or teach
forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over
or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. Forgiveness does
not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing
offenses. Though forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship,
it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person who harmed you,
or release them from legal accountability.
Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind and frees him
or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether
true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts
agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative
feelings. In that way, it empowers you to recognize the pain you
suffered without letting that pain define you, enabling you to heal and
move on with your life.

A cheater has to be remorseful


about their actions in order for
forgiveness to happen

Loss of trust is normal, but it can


be built back up

If both parties can't reflect on the


pitfalls of their relationship, it's
doomed to fail

A crypt (from Latin crypta "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other
building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics.
Creative nonfiction • a branch of writing that employs the literary techniques usually
associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons, places, or events. The genre of
creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction) is broad enough to include travel
writing, nature writing, science writing, sports writing, biography, autobiography, memoir,
the interview, and both the familiar and personal essay.

bservations
 "Creative nonfiction . . . is fact-based writing that remains compelling,
undiminished by the passage of time, that has at heart an interest in
enduring human values: foremost a fidelity to accuracy, to truthfulness."
(Carolyn Forché and Philip Gerard, Introduction, Writing Creative Nonfiction.
Story Press, 2001)

 "What Is Creative About Nonfiction?"


"It takes a whole semester to try to answer that, but here are a few points:
The creativity lies in what you choose to write about, how you go about
doing it, the arrangement through which you present things, the skill and
the touch with which you describe people and succeed in developing them
as characters, the rhythms of your prose, the integrity of the composition,
the anatomy of the piece (does it get up and walk around on its own?), the
extent to which you see and tell the story that exists in your material, and
so forth. Creative nonfiction is not making something up but making the
most of what you have."
(John McPhee, "Omission." The New Yorker, September 14, 2015)

 A Checklist for Writers of Creative Nonfiction


"[There] is a significant way in which creative nonfiction differs from
journalism. Subjectivity is not required in creative nonfiction, but specific,
personal points of view, based on fact and conjecture, are definitely
encouraged..."
(Lee Gutkind, "The Creative Nonfiction Police?" In Fact. W.W. Norton &
Company, 2005)

 Common Elements of Creative Nonfiction


"[Creative nonfiction] can be identified by these common elements:
personal presence (the author's self as spectator or participant, whether on
the page or behind the scenes), self-discovery and self-motivation,
flexibility of form (the tendency for the form to arise from the content
rather than the content to be contorted to fit an inverted pyramid or five-
paragraph or similarly prescriptive model), veracity (to paraphrase Annie
Dillard, rendering the real world coherent and meaningful either
analytically or artistically), and literary approaches (drawing
on narrative techniques also used in fiction or lyrical language also used in
poetry or dramatic rendering of scenes or cinematic uses of pacing and
focus)."
(Robert L. Root, The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)

 Walt Whitman on Writing About Real Things


"Whatever may be the case in years gone by, the true use of the imaginative
faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivification to facts, to science,
and to common lives, endowing them with the glows and glories and final
illustriousness which belong to every real thing, and to real things only."
(Walt Whitman, "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," 1888)

Also Known As
literary nonfiction, literary journalism, literature of fact

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