FLOWERS IN THE CRYPT shoulders and the moustache that grazed his upper
lip. He did not know her at all, and after she had sold
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 siler 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
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.
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.

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