Go well, dear Evelyn, forever sleep

(For Evelyn "Nang Bebe" Dumloan Gementiza-Hortelano)
13:45 Hs / 04.05.2009 / Dubai UAE

People are only scared of what they don’t know, and there was much I didn’t know. I understand death more clearly now, I don’t have to fear it.

Today my best friend, a good cousin, a loving sister, a “prodigal” daughter sigh her last breath and I just can’t believe she’s gone.

I cried. Yes I cried because she had been the best cousin I ever got. Strong character and a free spirit and it broke my heart that she will be gone from us forever. I never grieve this heavily before. I cried even more because I can’t be there when my family inters her body finally to her resting place.

For Nang Bebe, I offer you my prayers and thanks for a lot of things that you have done to me and to all of us around you who love you so much. Nang Bebe…

THANK YOU for being an older sister to me, because you've been my ally throughout life, both before and after you left.

THANK YOU for being my guiding cousin, and for putting up with me when I was obnoxious, as I surely must have been, as a little brother who adored you.

THANK YOU for being my big sister, not just in age, but in weight, for you taught me to celebrate being big.

THANK YOU for being my first confidante, my first teacher in the visual arts, dance and music, and my first teacher in the art of living with passion.

THANK YOU for sharing your love of music and dance, and for being a true Bohemian long before I knew what that word meant.

THANK YOU for encouraging my wildness, and for modeling full-bodied artistry.

THANK YOU for teaching me to be myself by being yourself.

THANK YOU for your extraordinary sensitivity, and for writing to me about being woken from sleep by the sound of falling rain.

THANK YOU for your tenderness, your toughness, your brilliance, your gentleness, your wisdom, your outrageousness, your courage, your intensity, your contradictions, your huge sense of humor, your great comic timing which makes Tatay and Nanay laugh so hard, your unquenchable sense of wonder, and your great hugs.

THANK YOU for teaching me, by leaving, that survival of the soul is more important than anything, including family.

THANK YOU for all the times I cried inside my heart out, missing you, because every time I wept, my compassion deepened in direct proportion to the pain.

THANK YOU for taking care of yourself, for being strong and for the will to postpone it despite the pain and the illness that you had borne even though it meant leaving us, because being strong in times of infirmity and diseased is the best gift you could ever give me.

Go well, dear Evelyn. I love you forever.