Circle of Life

2007 is a year wherein the Circle of Life is fully manifested. It's the first time in my life that I experienced a lot of deaths and on the other hand, a lot of births.

I've been writing death announcements one after the other and just recently, a friend of my mom passed away. My sister, her husband and I, went to her wake this evening to represent my mom. There were so many people there and the flowers were all in abundance. It's obvious that she was very much loved and will be very much missed. Just seeing the AVP prepared for her brought tears in my eyes.

Her death was caused by the same virus that killed one of the twin daughters of Benhur Abalos. They do not know where she got the virus, how it was transmitted and somehow, the specialists still don't have a cure. It was touch and go. When we spoke to her father and gave our condolences, he started crying again. He said he hasn't stopped crying ever since his daughter died.

As we practically did not know anyone except for the immediate family of the deceased, we kept to ourselves and stayed until the end of the mass. We marveled at the beautiful flowers and how magnificent the funeral home was (Sanctuarium is one of the newest things in the funeral business).

The whole thing got me thinking how fragile life is. Anyone can just die without due notice. Death sorts of gives one a different perspective on things. It made me think if I have lived or am living a meaningful life--a life which I can be proud of when I meet my Maker. It's not perfect nor is it bad. I still need to improve a lot of things and to decide on things that I'm hedging on.

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Leo and I visited three places this All Souls/Saints Day.

First of all, we visited Lolo Prime's grave at Batangas. The place was all clean and Lolo's grave was quite pristine. The one who cleaned up the place did a really good job.

We went there last Oct. 28 with Che, Mhon and of course, Miguel. We joined Tita Mae and her family. We had lunch at Tita Melen's place and we went to the cemetery.

Unfortunately, neither of us has the key to the mausoleum so just lighted our candles through the grill bars. Noticed though that the "PANGANIBAN" at the front is missing. I hope the letters were just taken out to be polished.











On the 1st of November, we joined Leo's family on a road trip going to Pampanga. We visited the grave of Papa's parents and brother at Sta. Ana. We rode with Tricie and her family on their nice Fortuner.

I'll post more pictures in the photos section.






Then lastly, on November 2, we went to Makati to visit Lolo Ruben and Lola Pacing's ashes.

Mhon, Che, Miguel, Nessie and Chloe were there. We had lunch there. Leo and I left at around 130 pm to go to Tagaytay as his family is waiting for us there.

We had dinner at Tagaytay Highlands where we went bowling with Leo's nephews and Leo's dad. Papa actually gave me tips on bowling. Didn't know that there's a science to it. I'm excited to go bowling soon to test all the new things I learned. Heck, it was the first time I bowled a score of 116 and at two strikes in a row! That has never happened to me before. I had an embarrassing moment when the ball flew out of my hands as I was pulling back to throw the ball. Good thing it did not hit any of the people sitting behind me.