Jennifer “Yeyette” Perey de Alas, my beautiful wife of close to a quarter of a century, has joined our Creator last April 25. She would have turned 48 this June 11.
Cancer was the underlying cause of her death. Her breast cancer, the ailment which she had been battling since 2020, metastasized to her brain and lungs. It also caused pericardial effusion (antecedent cause). But the initial cause of her death was pneumonia. The cancer cells in her body already weakened her immune system.
She was buried in her captivating hometown of Abra de Ílog, Mindoro Occidental, together with the remains of her beloved grandparents and other relatives. It was her final wish.
Shortly before her demise, I was able to contact Fr. Jojo Zerrudo, the same priest who married us on 13 September 2013. She was already on the throes of death, already unconscious. But the moment Fr. Zerrudo was to give her a small piece of the Eucharist (Viaticum), she suddenly opened her eyes to receive It. It was a miracle.
A few hours later, at 4:10 AM, April 25, she gave up the ghost.
But she didn’t want to die. About an hour after receiving the Viaticum, she still regained some semblance of consciousness, fighting off nurses who tried to connect her to an oxygen machine. Moments before her death, I saw her left hand clench into a fist.
She was literally fighting death.
Yeyette didn’t want to die not because she was afraid of dying. She didn’t want to die because she was afraid of leaving us, of leaving me alone with our children. Because she knew that I am not “father material”, that I couldn’t do it on my lonesome. Her fight against death was borne out of love for us. She didn’t want to leave us because she loved us so much. Her love was so immense it would have outshone the sun.
My beautiful wife, the mother of our five children, was gone. We promised each other that we will grow old together. But cancer broke that promise…
Twenty-three days have passed since Yeyette joined our Creator. I have been weeping every single day since she left. And today is by far the most difficult day of my grieving (and to think that it’s not yet even a month of her passing). I have cried so many times even without the slightest provocation. There was no need for a song nor a picture of hers to well up emotions. Like Taal and Mayón, I just break down without warning.
After my night shift, as I was saying my morning prayers in front of our “altarcito”, I felt a heaving inside my chest, and broke down afterwards. In between sobs, I uttered aloud, that may she appear to me, even if just for a brief moment, ridiculous as it may seem. I clutched the Mass card sent to me by her dear friend Fritzy Barredo and read its text while weeping.
I was nonplussed when my intellect suddenly questioned the existence of the afterlife. For a moment, my faith suddenly wobbled down and lost its ground. In my desperation to hopefully embrace her one day, I started looking for answers, for a semblance of reason that there is hope that I would be able to do so. Somewhere out there, is she really waiting for me and our children? Are souls indeed real? Is she really watching over us? Does she miss us? If Heaven is a place where there is no more pain nor sorrow, how does she feel now seeing me in anguish down here? Does she and many others who have departed throughout the centuries still have the same human emotions? Or are they now enjoying neoteric ones that are hitherto unknown or inaccessible to mortals like us?
Yeyette had a puppy love who died years ago. Are they together again as lovers? When my life ends, will I see them together, or will she have to choose between us? She died at 47. What if I reach the age of 90? What if her children outgrow her? How will we end up together in Heaven?
Or was April 25 really the end for her, that there is actually no soul and that she is nothing more now but just worm and ant food? That after all these years of defending and living my faith, I am actually believing in a systematized delusion? Quoting from a short story written by my friend Joe Bert Lazarte: Yeyette will never be back no matter how many billions of years will pass, even if all her flesh bleeds dry and turns into dust right at this very moment, and all matter in the universe implodes into nothingness…
I wept again and started to question my disbelief. I struggled to get up, to prepare for another day. The corner of my eye caught our altarcito. Spiritually embarrassed for this brief interlude of skepticism, my thoughts started to wrestle between belief and disbelief. I am sure that this is just a phase, that all those who had grieved before me experienced the exact same thing, that all my questions have been answered before, and that I just haven’t encountered them yet. Who am I to question a faith that has been defended and developed by minds far greater than mine?
Catechism teaches us that “Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.” There, Yeyette and I will no longer be husband and wife. Simply put, we will not be exactly the same as we were in this world. Our existence will no longer be about us, it will all be about adoring God for all eternity.
But I do not want our love for each other to end. So here I weep again…
* * * * * * *
EMBRACE ETERNAL
(written a few hours before her interment on May 3)
This afternoon we inter you
in your beloved Abra de Ílog
together with the bones
of those who reared you.
Though you left me shivering
in this sweltering heat
(your favorite season)
I will be steadfast with the
hopeful thought
that the warmth of your embrace
will always be with me
as I sorrowfully soldier on
in this Valley of Tears.
EL FILIPINISMO 