Feeling the Veil

Dear Friend and Reader:

SHORTLY AFTER the death of her second husband, I remember Mama talking loudly in the middle of the night. She was invoking the names of her father, her first husband: my father Felix, her second husband Lorenzo, her dead brothers Joe and Frank, and having a loud and lively conversation as if a family reunion, a party complete with food and drink, was taking place in her bedroom.

Wakened from a dream where I was at a family party with Mama, I listened in. Was I dreaming or was there really a party going on in another part of the house? I was sleeping in the next bedroom to keep a watch on her as we prepared for Lorenzo’s funeral. We all called him Bob and I always believed he was the true love of her life.

“Tatang (Grandpa), Bob, Jose!” Mama cried out. In half-consciousness I realized the party I was at with my relatives was not a dream. The ghosts were here. Still heavy from sleep, I moved my limbs, getting up to go to her bedroom. Her bedroom light was on full blast, she was half-sitting up in her bed. Her eyes were shut. She was still talking. I sat down slowly and carefully on the side of her bed, watching her, waiting for her to awaken and see me, full and alive, by her side.

The energy in the room was expectant. I dared not startle her awake, believing my mother was sleepwalking while in bed. She was calling to them as tears started to come. I held her and calmly rocked her awake.

“Fe, nakong (my child), they’re here.”

I held her like a mother holding a baby until its crying subsided. I put both hands on her shoulders, asking calmly, “Mama, what is it that they want?”

“They wanted to know if I wanted to go with them now,” she cried. I knew that once again she was touching the edges of the veil between the living and the dead. This was nothing new for her.

She has done this three times as far as I can remember, the first being after the death of her father, my grandfather in 1961. In the dead of night she walked from her bedroom to the backyard to get my grandfather some tomatoes that she grew. But it was wintertime and there were no tomatoes. Tatang was dead for four months. My father picked her up from where she collapsed in front of the family’s porch swing, putting her back to bed.

The next time was two days after Dad died suddenly of a heart attack. My sister, my future brother-in-law, his dog Gandolf and I all stayed with Mama before the funeral. At 1:30 am, the dog howled incessantly, scratching at the door. All of us humans were in REM state, unaware. I was having a dream of a dog howling, but mama told us in the morning that was no dream. The dog sensed a presence at the front door, and howled because it knew. With Gandolf howling Mama walked to the front door, refusing to open it, telling my father’s spirit that it was time for him to move on, that he didn’t need to come back. “It’s ok, Felix. Its ok.” In a few moments Gandolf stopped howling. Mama went back to bed.

Holding my mother in my arms this time, I helped take on her burden of being the spokesperson and intermediary between the living and the dead. The air of expectancy was electric with the sense of those who were waiting on one side, and me, her child on the other. I was torn between wanting to hold on to her with every last thread of life I had and yet, conversely, I faced allowing her the choice to leave a life wrought with the crushing weight of terrible grief that once again flooded her. Both these conflicting directions were filled with a love so deep and clear that I could see through to her heart.

“Mama,” I asked “what is it that you want to do? Do you want to stay or do you want go with Tatang and Jose?”

She swallowed the remainder of her tears. I closed my eyes and waited. Minutes passed.

“I want to see Nikko (my nephew) and Felicia (my niece) grow up,” she said, adding matter-of-factly, “please get me a drink of water.”

By the time I returned from the kitchen with the glass full, the atmosphere in the room had changed. It was as if we just finished watching an episode of some strange TV show, had turned it off and were ready for bed. The veil to the continuum of life and death had quietly faded from view, allowing Mama her choice to love amongst the living. Before she decided, I sensed I had to love her and give her a choice allowing her to let go. I believe those who were patiently waiting for her from the other side of that veil did the same. Mama could have gone either way at that moment, if not for remembering and needing the love of the children living here and now — her joy in this life.

2005. Mama has been dead two years. I was now the custodian of her beloved cymbidium orchids, which surround my little 100-year old cottage in central Berkeley. Every year, the orchids seem to double their flower spikes, and this Christmas was no different. I was feeding them the same bloom food Mama always fed them. I was getting ready to meet my family to spend the holiday week together. Being a singleton in the family, this holiday always filled me with mixed emotions.

While pouring the liquid food into the orchid pots I felt an embrace that could only have been her. On that brisk 40-degree Christmas morning, I could feel her hold me, and it was warm. As I was looking straight into the leaf-green maw of a gorgeous erotic orchid about to burst open, I heard her voice saying matter-of-factly, “You know, you really are a gift to your family.”

I stood surrounded by her cymbidiums, weeping uncontrollably, a hole deep inside my heart missing her and yet getting filled with a love even stronger than I ever remembered feeling from her when she was alive. Like her, now it was I who was touching the veil, feeling it, allowing it to appear. The night of “the party” with family members long gone, she had given her gift of feeling the veil to me. I was ready.

The veil will always be here, appearing when those of us living are ready to feel it. It will come in many forms. It could be a party. Or an unexpected visit. It might be a need to touch and taste the earthly delights that you long ago remembered. Or it’s just the feeling of a sweet love you carry with you from beyond time. The veil is an embrace between two worlds, and as far as I know, it’s as beautiful and warm as tears of remembrance falling on exotic blooming flowers.

Yours & truly,

Fe Bongolan in San Francisco