Chapter 1

June 8, 1989-

Dying is a family thing and we're good at it.

Nana said it's a curse. My Tios had been dying ever since I learned how to walk. Tio Jim died when I was 2. He was just 30 years old. When I was 3, Tio Eddie the eldest of Nana's doomed sons died at the age of 32. I was 4 years old when Tio Donnie died.

When I was 5, my father wondered why he was still alive.

It was good news for him but nothing can be said the same for my mom. They always quarreled especially when my father went home smelling lambanog.

I thought mom was disappointed that the curse did not get him on time.

Later on, mom left us for another family. I asked Nana if that too was part of the curse package. She did not answer. She just stared at me and tears were dripping from her tired gray eyes and then she hugged me. I thought it was my turn to die but she assured me that it wasn't.

I was 10 and my father was 40 years old when the curse finally caught up. One day, dad woke up feverish and dizzy. He threw up a lot but it was not your regular kind of puke.

He vomited blood.

Loads of it.

He was very sick the entire month.

One time I heard him pray to god and then cursed at him, and then prayed and then cursed at him again. I advised him to make up his mind about what to do with God or else he will leave us too like what mom did.

He shot me a look like the one Nana gave when she forgot to buy something in the Supermarket.

That night he hugged me tightly as if it was his last. It felt good and warm.

He died the following morning.

I remembered touching his hands. They were cold so I descended downstairs and asked "Nana, can I give dad a warm sponge-bath? I think he's cold," she rushed upstairs and panic was painted all over her wrinkled face.

She shouted my dad's name like how she shouted the names of my Tios when they died, loud and full of grief. It was so loud that I thought dad has gone to some place where he can no longer hear her voice.

I touched dad's hands for one last time and from how cold they felt on my skin, I can tell that I will no longer get the same warm hugs from him like the one he gave me the other night.

Nana cried a lot.

I wanna cry too but my tears had been exhausted. So I decided to just sleep on my bed. While I was sleeping, I dreamed that mom and dad were fighting. I can't hear a thing they said because blood came out of their mouths instead of words. So I ran up to them to try and stop them from fighting. But they won't and more blood came splurging until I was totally covered with it.

Blood on my hands, on my face, blood everywhere I look.

I cried for help and hugged mom but Mom looked down on me and hit me with a hanger. Moms love to hit their kids with things, some prefer broom, belt or a flip-flop but my mom's weapon of choice was a hanger. Nana said it's called 'Mother's Love'.

But she left.

She could have chosen to hit me with hangers more than I can count with my fingers and I could have pretended all along that she loved me as Nana said.

But she left.

I woke up panting and scared to death. I walked towards the sala and saw dad's dead body in a casket.

There were a lot of people in the house and Nana was with my aunts and some distant relatives. They gathered around the casket and uttered some prayers.

The people outside who were attending the vigil of my dad's death were happy drinking and gambling. I thought I saw dad in one of the empty chairs laughing and drinking his favorite lambanog.

I wanted to join my aunts and Nana in crying downstairs because I had gathered enough tears to cry but Nana told me once that it was rude for children to deal with older people. I went back to my room instead and sobbed in the corner with my face in- between my knees and my hands were covering my ears because there's been a lot of crying and laughing outside and it's confusing.

I wiped my tears dry because I wanted to save some of it in case there's going to be another death in the family to cry for.

Crying did make me feel better. Funny how the same tears that made us sad, can also make us feel better. I made a pinky swear with myself that night that I would grow up to be a man like my father and die somewhere because that's what we do and we're good at it.