since i moved to this bleak city about 3 years ago, i’d altogether abandoned the all saints day ritual my family religiously follows every year. instead, i light candles outside my apartment and say a simple prayer for my ancestors’ beloved souls, then party till the break o’ dawn..
this year is different though, for not only did i re-join my family for our nov.01 get-together, i also learned a few weird facts about my great grandrelatives. these weird facts are all from dead relatives from my dad’s side, which figures coz my dad’s all whacked up. no kidding.
anyhoo, on to the weird shit.
first, one of my great grands, ranulfo, died a bachelor. he was an alcoholic for the most part of his life. he wasn’t always like that though, and i felt sorry for him when i heard the story of how he turned out to consume the rest of his life drunk and useless. he had a fiancé who, on the night he went to her house and announced to her parents that they were engaged, voiced her reservations of the engagement and broke it off in front of her family: parents, siblings, grannies.. the whole freaking lot. after that, my great grand uncle went home and started what would be the only thing he’d be good at: drinking. he died at 51, never dated another woman, never got another job, never got back on his feet after having his heart pulled out, chewed and spat by the very woman he loved.
next is cresencia, another great grand. my granny’s sister who died at 21. as my dad recounted the story of how she died, i had goosebumps all over i couldn’t tell if it was from being too scared or wanting to take a dump. as the story goes, my granny’s family was a bit well off, which explained why some of them grew up to be snobs. cresencia was no exception. one night while attending a ball, a guy (supposedly from Aklan) asked her to dance. she not only refused, but also belittled the guy who so bravely asked her to dance. cresencia was a beauty you see, and i think this guy who asked her to dance looked better performing circus acts than dancing. so the next day, she starts getting sick. she starts having nervous breakdowns. she starts seeing things no one else could. she starts to scream at nothing and everything. they take her to an albularyo, and find out she’s been hexed. i’m not sure how long she lasted, but she died shortly after the ball.
lastly, my dad’s grandfather, delfin. my great-great granddad. he was a full-blooded chinese who one night during the japanese occupation was stopped and taken by 3 men in uniform in the middle of the road. he was never seen after that night, and although my great-great granny looked for him for weeks, it was believed that he’d been killed by the japs for his connection with the hukbalahap, or huk. my granny herself never got to know her dad, she was just a small kid at the time he disappeared.
makes me wonder what stories of me will be passed on to my future grandchildren. will they be told that i was the granny with the most number of boyfriends? or that i was the only one who got married after 30? or maybe 40? will they ever find out that i kept a blog of all my shenanigans? or will they just be told that i was the most stubborn and hard-headed of the 5 kids, that i just went off to live by myself in a bleak city until the day i died?
all i know is… if i want nice stories of me to be passed on to the next janes, i better start being nice to chubby cheeks.


