Her name was Daisy Tisi.  She was a domestic worker for one of my mother’s clients. And that was how they met.  My mother has this ability to converse with just about anyone anywhere and end up sharing her faith.  Daisy was no exception.

Daisy’s reaction was not typical.  She said that she used to attend Sunday School at a Baptist Church in her hometown somewhere in the Visayas.  But my mom persisted in showing her the plan of salvation anyway.  Daisy may have attended Sunday School but she has never before been invited to repent and ask Jesus Christ to save her.  She responded by praying the sinner’s prayer with my mother.  My mom then gave Daisy her number and address so that on her day off, she can go and worship with us.  Daisy kept my mother’s name and number.

The next time my mother paid a visit to her client, she was surprised that Daisy was not employed there anymore.  Later, she got a call from Daisy herself telling her that she left her former employer because she was afraid to be left all alone in the house when her employers went to work.  My mom invited her over and Daisy said she would when she had free time. She was trying to find another job.

About two weeks later, my mother got a phone call from a pastor’s wife in Marikina.   The pastor’s wife wanted to know if my mom knew a certain Daisy Tisi.  My mother said yes and talked with Daisy on the phone. Daisy apparently asked to use the phone at the Baptist Church in Marikina to call my mom. Daisy asked my mom if she could work for her as a kasambahay and my mother agreed.  She went to Marikina that same day to pick Daisy up.

When my mother picked up Daisy from the parsonage in Marikina, she was surprised to see that Daisy had grown overweight. The pastor’s wife recalled how Daisy walked into their church.  She told my mother that Daisy had been wandering around Marikina, she had climbed to the top of the Marikina Bridge and seriously contemplated jumping off the Marikina Bridge.

In the car, my mother probed further.  My mother probably imbibed my dad’s skill at cross-examination by process of osmosis because as she probed further and commented on her weight gain, Daisy began to sob and told all. She was not overweight, she was pregnant.  It was the reason she left her former employer.  She hadn’t been there for very long when she noticed that she had missed her menstrual periods.  She was afraid that her employer would send word to her aunt if they discovered she was pregnant so she left their employ.

As it turned out, Daisy was working in Cebu, when her live-in partner, the mother of her eldest daughter, Queenie, came to see her.  She left her partner because he hit her and she left her daughter in the care of her mother while she worked in Cebu.  Her partner came with a letter from her mother saying that her daughter was sick and that she needed to go home.

Her live-in partner purchased a ticket for her.  She immediately went with him but instead of bringing her back home, he brought her to Manila to live with his relatives as a maid.  During the trip, her ex-boyfriend raped her and brought her to the shanty of a friend of his somewhere where she was to stay until he had contacted his relatives who needed a maid.  When her partner was asleep, she escaped and tried to find the home of her distant relative.  This distant relative, her aunt, agreed to help her find employment so that she can finally go back home.  At that time, Daisy did not know that she had become pregnant from the rape.

Daisy was resolute, she wanted to leave the baby with my mother, with us. She could not care for it and she was afraid that her live-in partner would hurt the baby in a rage of jealousy, accusing her of having sexual relations with another if he ever found out about the baby.

Daisy gave birth at the Eulogio Rodriguez Lying-in Hospital and Health Center on April 11, 1986.  Aling Milia, our laundrywoman, stayed up with Daisy during her labor through the night and was waiting for me to come and keep watch when at 8:46 am, Daisy felt that she had to go to the bathroom desperately. Aling Milia assisted her to get to the bathroom. When she was about to sit on the bowl, Aling Milia noticed that it was not fecal matter coming out of her but the round head of a baby.  Aling Milia caught the baby with her skirt and hollered for a nurse.

JONATHAN MAR CAGANDAHAN ARIAS was born.  He weighed 2,600 grams at birth.  We bought a crib and my sister Delle and I took turns taking care of him until he was six months old.  He cut his first teeth at three months.  He learned to sit up all by himself at seven months.  He pulled himself to stand in his playpen at nine months.  He didn’t speak until he was two years old.  All our apprehensions of his inability to speak were dispelled when he finally spoke.  After that, we couldn’t shut him up. He pestered us with his questions all the time.

We took him everywhere: I took him to Brent School where I worked, I even took him to UP.  I was having class with Dean Merlin Magallona when Jonathan casually walked in and sat next to me.  Dean Magallona said, “My, my, the students we accept into the College of Law keep getting younger and younger with each passing year!”  Jonathan was only five years old then.

I took him for a roller-coaster ride at the UP Fair.  I took him to a dinosaur exhibit at the Folk Arts Theater.  The last thing he wanted to do was to see Beauty and the Beast but it wasn’t showing yet.  We watched The Little Mermaid and Hook instead.

I don’t know if Jonathan was dyslexic or if he had this uncanny ability to write in mirror images.  He loved school.  He loved riding the bus to and from school.  He wanted to take the LRT but we didn’t have time for that then.  I even took him with me to Lanly’s house where he tried to learn how to ride a bike.  We bought him a bike at Arcega’s on Aurora Boulevard.  He quickly wore out the training wheels, but he learned to ride a bike on Castaneda street ( the dead-end street where the Mandaluyong Bible Baptist Church was).  At that time, Nueve de Febrero was being repaired, widened so that it can be linked up with the Makati-Mandaluyong bridge.  So accustomed was he to playing on the street because it was still closed to traffic that when it was finally opened to traffic, he was utterly confused. He was so confused, he got bumped by a car when he just ran out into the street and ended up at Lourdes Hospital.  Little did we know that that was a foreshadowing of things to come.

He went to Good Shepherd Christian School for first grade.  He rode on the school service and he had lots of friends. He died sometime on the evening of  August 5, 1992.  The next morning, when the school service picked him up, I rode on the service.  Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what Jonathan saw everyday when he went to school.  When I reached the school, I informed the teacher who promptly gave me all of Jonathan’s things that he had left at school.  I was so numbed by the loss, I couldn’t cry.  I must have walked all the way from I. Lopez to Acacia Lane before I felt my arms get tired from lugging Jonathan’s books.  I took a tricycle home.

He died on a Wednesday night.  Usually, my folks brought him with them to church but, since school started that year, he stayed home with Tita Becky to do homework, watch a little TV and go to bed early.  At church, my Mom, Dad, Sam and I were looking at the pictures Jonathan drew during the Sunday Service.  He wanted to sit with Teacher Tess Banal ( she was his teacher in Nursery) during the morning service.  He drew a “cloud car” for her — it was a car made from a cloud that flies so fast, it can fly straight to heaven where the angels directed traffic flow.  He loved to make up stories and drew matching pictures.  We didn’t know that it was a foreshadowing of his death just three days later.

Before going  home after the midweek prayer meeting, we visited a church member who was confined at the Polymedic General Hospital for acute appendicitis. He had just gotten out of surgery.  When we finally got home the iron gates were wide open, all the lights were on in the house and Paul was standing dazedly on the driveway.  I remember Dad murmuring: “looks like something’s wrong.”  With arms outstretched, Paul stopped us from driving into the garage. “Puntahan ninyo sila sa ospital, ” he kept saying.  My dad kept asking, sino? sino?  saan? saan?  Paul was incoherent with shock and grief  (this has never happened before:  Paul is decisive and always on top of things so we knew something was terribly wrong.) “Si Jonathan, si Jonathan, hindi ko alam” was all he could say.

We thought that when we left Polymedic, the ER seemed quiet so we reasoned that Jonathan could not have been brought there.  But then, they could have arrived when we had just left so we first went to Polymedic.  Jonathan wasn’t there.  We went next to Lourder hospital.  At the ER, I saw Delamar.  Her face was red and puffy, she had on two different slippers which were not hers at all.  She had no bra on and was wearing her bedclothes!  All she could say was, “Ate, Ate, si Daddy, si Daddy, nasaan?  Ayaw nila kami pasakayin sa taxi.  Walang pumarang taxi sa amin.  Hiniga so Jonathan doon sa patungan ng magdi-diario sa kanto.  Wala na si Jonathan!”

Tita Becky stood in the lobby with her red leather bag draped on her left arm, looking like a Dona but wearing her pambahay: a batik shorts and sleeveless outfit and abaca slippers.  She was pale and dazed.  All she could say was, “bakit ba ako hindi umakyat kaagad?  Ayaw bumaba ni Jonathan para kumain kasi nag-merienda siya.  Tawag ako ng tawag, dapat umakyat ako kaagad.  Nakita ko siya, blue na siya, sumigaw ako.  Umakyat si Paul, siya ang nagbaba kay Jonathan. ”  Her utterances seemed like cryptic spy telegrams.  I slowly tried to piece the events together.

All this time, I was the only one who got off the car at Lourdes Hospital.  My Mom, my Dad and Sam were all waiting in the car.  I came back and called my Dad.  The ER staff were trying to revive Jonathan but he was dead.  My Dad carried Jonathan from the gurney, hugging his body to his and we heard a gurgling sound in his throat.  My dad cried, “He’s still alive!”  But the doctor said, no, sir, that’s just saliva in his throat.  He was dead on arrival.”

My Dad left me his wallet and said, my pera diyan.  My aunt handed me her wallet and said, may pera diyan.  I paid the hospital bills.  I saw that they injected his heart with adrenaline to get it to pump again.  I saw the report, he was dead on arrival, possible cause of death, asphyxiation due to strangulation.  My Titabs said she found him hanging by the bedroom curtains.  He was only six years old.  He told my Tita two hours before:  Titabs, I’m like spiderman, I can climb the wall.  I’m like superman I can fly! Para din akong power rangers kasi, I can jump and kick at the same time!  Galing ko!”

We think that he tried to fly using the bedroom curtains.  He must have climbed up the window ledge and from there, a la Tarzan, he used the curtains to hoist himself up to a flying leap onto my parents’ bed.  But he got tangled in the curtains.  His neck got caught.  He was so small, and light, the curtains thick and sturdy, just a few seconds of entanglement and lack of oxygen and he died.  That was how my Titabs found him, entangled in the curtains, hanging by his neck with the rest of the length of the curtain wound around his leg and foot.

At the hospital, I was informed that because the death was not due to natural causes, an autopsy will be conducted.  I accompanied the body to the hospital morgue where I said goodbye.  I rode in the ambulance with Jonathan’s body to the Funeraria on Roosevelt Avenue where the autopsy will be conducted.  When I got home, some members from Project 8 had brought crema de fruta for my Dad’s birthday on August 6 and they were shocked to find us all dazed.  How can we ever celebrate my Dad’s birthday without grief?  Jonathan died on the eve of my Dad’s 54th birthday.

People these days insist on celebrating my Dad’s birthday not knowing that it brings my Dad private pain and guilt to celebrate his birthday when the day before, we remember Jonathan’s loss.  People refuse to understand that my Dad doesn’t want to celebrate his birthday because it is painful for him.  They always insist on merrymaking. When my Dad wants to remember Jonathan.  They probably mean well but their efforts just rub me wrong. And what grates on my nerves more is their insistence that borders on thoughtlessness.

It was the first death in our immediate family.  Mars was still a freshman in UP Baguio. On the night of my Dad’s birthday, he was banging on the gate, distraught.  We left a message for him at his boarding house in the early morning of August 6.  He must have slept in late or left early for his classes because he didn’t get the message from his landlady until the afternoon. He took the night trip to Manila, sobbing in the bus.  And there he was, six hours later,  sobbing at the gate.

Thank you for sharing your short life with us, Jonathan.  Thank you for the laughter.  Thank you for your wit.  Thank you for the pain of your death.  When you died, I had to come to grips with the reality that heaven really isn’t so far away.  You are one of the reasons why the pain of death is overshadowed by the excitement of heaven:  not only will I see Jesus, my Savior whom I have loved without having ever seen, I will also see you and Titabs and all those I love who have gone on ahead.

The LORD giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the LORD.