7 Days of Horror

Saturday - Ages Ago (PART I)

"SATURDAY - AGES AGO"

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". . .The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes to the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to arouse my anger. . ."

 - Jeremiah 7:18, New International Version

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Solar Eclipse, January 4, 1992. The longest solar eclipse happened in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Saturday.

My daughter was killed. Christine. She was just a simple girl. Her smile fills up my world. Her last goodbye that day while on her way to school was her last. That last and tranquil smile painted on her face would never be forgotten. Her unexpected and brutal death made me grieve immensely. Killed by a man who's insane beyond comparison. Only the Devil himself can manage to do that kind of thing to my daughter, to my innocent daughter whose dreams are now shattered. It was her death and the loneliness I felt that drifted me toward a place darker than I could ever imagine.

January 5, 1992.

I decided to bring my daughter back to life with means I did not know were just within my reach. Her loss pained me a lot which led my emotional and mental state at a brink of nowhere--everything was breaking apart, falling--I needed to put the pieces back again. Everything that I do reminds me of her. Even my body would not respond, I was numb to the bones. The daughter that I carried for 9-long months had been killed easily and unlawfully by a man who was diagnosed to be mentally retarded.

What made me bring her back to life?

Solitude. 

I was alone. I was a single-mother. Desperate. Trapped in this subtle and threacherous world. A victim of the grippling hands of men who only knew lust.

But, above all, I was a mother longing for her child.

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1991

I am a Marian devotee. I joined a group named "Queen of Heavens", honoring the blessed virgin Mary after of my parents were killed by the Baguio earthquake in 1990. They stayed in the Baguio Park Hotel after a business trip, enjoying the bliss and innocence of  their siesta at around 4 in the afternoon when the 7.7 magnitude killer quake hit the City of Pines. When their bodies were found and were buried, I decided to join the group--I just needed to hold on to something, something that could feed me spiritually, or else I'd be gone mad.

I was 32 years-old then, and the loss of my parents affected my whole life as a mother.

The moment I joined the group in 1991 Christine was already celebrating her 16th birthday. My busy schedule with the group did not bother her; she would even tag along with us whenever we  would have a gathering. May it be on a silent and secluded mountain or inside a house of one of the members, Christine would always be there, fascinated and in awed with our divine rituals.

Christine knew we were alone; she knew that she's a product of the atrocity of this unfair world. And that was the reason she loved me more. For her, I was a savior. She was shy but then her gratitude toward me for keeping her inside my womb was always visible in her actions. She's a good daughter. A very good daughter to lose.

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1992

The nigt was already long when I arrived to our small apartment in Agoo, La Union, around 10:24. I worked as a bank clerk in one of the major banks in La Union that time. The pay was good and it was enough for me and to support Christine's education.