Guest Blogger Week: A love story
My grandfather, Theodore (Doro for short) and my grandmother Catalina (but everyone called her Nana) grew up together in the Bataan province of the Philippines. (It’s a peninsula close to the capital, Manila). They were neighbors and had known each other their entire lives. My dad told me they used to play together and hung out with the same circle of friends from the neighborhood. My grandmother used to tell me that caramels were her favorite candy because that is what Doro would bring to her every sunday after church. We ate a lot of caramel when we were kids. When they fell in love and were engaged, WWII had just broken out. Doro was 19, and Nana was 18. As my dad tells me that in the middle of the night, the Japanese invaded and managed to capture and execute most of the men in the town. Doro and Nana lived toward the outskirts of the town, and Nana and her sister heard the Japanese coming. She tried to warn her family, and my grandfather’s family as well, so they could run away from them. But to no avail, the invaders caught them running for their lives and brought them back to town. The next day, they made them march to a prison camp along with the other captured men and soldiers. However, being a crafty guy he was, Doro managed to escape during the death march to the forest where he hid for the remainder of the war. My dad told me that as he was running, one of the japanese soldier shot him in the leg and that was why he always walked with a limp. For the remainder of the war, Doro hid in the jungle surviving on what he could find. He ate monkeys, fruit, squirrels; pretty much anything he could get his hands on. He never stayed in one place long, for fear of capture, but somehow he made it back to Nana every so often. During this time they concieved by Uncle Antonio. After the war ended, they got married and had 6 more children and started a farm back in Bataan.     My grandfather developed Alzheimer’s around 2003. It was terrible for everyone in my family for him to not recognize us or be able to know what was going on. The most heartbreaking part of their story comes after my grandmother passed in 2005. In filipino culture, the funeral takes place at the home with the body laying for the wake in the living room. During this time, he would go to her coffin and ask her to wake up so they could go have breakfast or dinner. He would wonder why she didn’t sleep in bed with her or why she didn’t come when he called for her. He would ask why she wasn’t outside eating with everyone else. After the funeral and my grandmother was buried, he became very confused. He asked my dad, “Where’s Nana? Why can’t I find her?”. My dad replied, “Papa, Mama died. We just buried her.” After this, my grandfather became outraged. He broke things in the house, he screamed at his children, and was inconsolable. He screamed, “Someone killed your mama! You are terrible children for not finding her killer!” My dad and his siblings tried soothing him the best they could, and he finally accepted that she was gone. I still think he misses her terribly, but just doesn’t talk about it anymore because it’s too painful for him to be without her.
Written by Danielle (Photo Philippines circa WWII)