FLOWERS IN THE CRYPT by Catherine Garcia
He did not know her at all,
Dario
The woman in the photos was not there when Lolo died.
She was not there when they wrapped up his body and
wheeled him to the morgue, nor was she at his wake
when each of us bent to kiss his cold, pallid forehead.
On the day the oven lit up, I expected her to burst
through the door, press her face against the glass
divider and weep while Lolo turned into ash. But the
funeral went by along with the rosaries and novenas,
plates of puto and pan de sal; the ornate flower
arrangements embellished with long, silk ribbons that
read: OUR DEEP CONDOLENCES TO THE GARCIA FAMILY.
I waited for her; I imagined her wearing the silver
cocktail dress that we found under Lolo’s bed I
remembered how Lola whipped out her scissors and cut
it until it was nothing more but a pile of shredded satin.
I did not know about Remedios—that was her name, I
found out soon after—because Lolo hid her very well.
She was invisible during our beach trips, when he would
prop me on his shoulders and carry me along the shore.
He would tell me all his stories about his hometown, his
adventures in the war, my beautiful Lola and how much
he loved her. He told me neither of the house in
Antipolo and the cousin I’ve never met, and when I
learned them through the cigarettes and coffee my
mother and her sisters medidated over, I felt Remedios
creep up on me like a ghost. I did not know if Lolo really
loved us, and I was not sure if he really knew how.
There was a moment, sixty years ago, in his home in
Bataan. My mother told me that my great-grandma
stood at the top of the stairs, hurling at her husband a
heavy, leather suitcase. Lolo sat on the carpet below,
listening to her scream that she did not love him, and
she never did. Out his father went and in came another.
Lolo’s mother had been making love to his gangly
pieano teacher for years, and it took only the departure
of his father to finally conceive the three stepsiblings
that Lolo eventually grew up with. The next time he saw
his father, he was dressed in a black suit and standing
over a bullet-laden corpse. He was twelve-years-old
with half-a-dozen more siblings pressed against another
woman’s breast. He said that the woman didn’t even
know of him; he never expected her to.
He left for the war. The year the Japanese broke
into his house and took two of his half-sisters
was the same year he found himself outside
their military camp, telling the soldiers that he
knew how to cook rice and polish shoes. For
nearly three years he starched uniforms and
poured sake, almost collapsing under the
defeaning siren of the air raids that jolted him
awake at night. When the war was over, he went
back home to his mother’s house. By that time
his piano teacher had died of lupus, and she sat
alone on the wicker chair, scarcely lifting her
head as as she told him: “Oh, Exequiel. Buhay
ka pala.”
He could not forget those words; how his
mother’s vacant eyes looked past his broad,
stocky shoulders and the moustache that
grazed his upper lip.
and after she had sold their piano, the only
sound in their house was the tapping of her
fingernails against her tocador. When Lolo left
for university, she sat on the bench and
watched the bus whisk him away. He did not
say good-bye.
It was in Manila where Lolo started smoking;
selling handwritten poems off to friends and
classmates who wanted to please their lovers.
He was driftwood— taking in all sorts of odd
jobs to pay for the series of apartments that he
rented.
The only way to finish his studies was to wake
up at dawn and open the gates of the university
every morning, and he was relentless at it. He
became a journalist, a businessman, a husband.
He married Lola two months after he published
an article about the most beautiful girl on
campus: Narciza Cortez, 18 years old. 5”1, curly
hair, high cheekbones. Cebuana.
I had often thought that it was their abrupt,
passionate romance that led their marriage to
ruin. Lola sold her mother’s jewellery in order to
pay for the wedding, and not until Lolo landed a
steady job in the newspaper did they move out
of his sister’s house. He worked nights chasing
after politicians, inspecting car accidents;
searching for tapeworms in eateries. He came
home to a wife too young and too eager to bear
a man with his ambition. She had pools to swim
in and cigarettes to smoke; she could not wait
for the phone to ring and Lolo’s Mustang to
appear in the garage. It was almost inevitable
that Remedios would come along.
I never met the woman, but all I know is that she
had long, white legs and copper hair at the time
Lolo hired her to work in his office. I do not
know if she was his secretary or another
journalist—Lola never told me, and my mother
could not bring herself to. But as the Polaroid
showed, she was tireless on the dance floor and
she loved drinking champagne. She was not as
beautiful as Lola, but Lolo took her to Japan
and Switzerland; bought her gowns and
diamonds. He took their children to the beach,
and he also propped them on his shoulders as
they walked along the shore.
For years, I harbored a coagulated bitterness
inside me. My mother told me of the moment
her car came to a halt at the traffic light and
found herself staring at Lolo’s Mustang
humming right next to her. In the backseat was
a girl wearing school uniform, about ten years
younger than she was. That evening, when Lolo
sat me on his lap and read to me his copy of
Don Quixote, his words seemed to muck out of
his throat. I could not listen; could not look at
him. How could I love somebody who did not
know how to love?
I was eleven years old when he got a stroke.
The phone call at two in the morning informed
us that Lolo had collapsed in his apartment and
suffered multiple seizures. The CT scan showed
that his brain had several distensions and
swelled up his skull like a balloon. I did not
shed the lightest tear, not even after he slipped
into a coma. When the drugs had seeped in and
he finally opened his eyes, he was no longer
Lolo. He was a vegetable.
He lived for two more years. After months in
Medical City, we transferred him back to his
apartment in Makati. My mother converted his
bedroom into a hospital ward, and soon the
curtains smelled like antiseptic and drone of the
lifeline monitor filled our ears. I hated visiting
him, and I fabricated stories so that I wouldn’t
have to go: piles of homework, a migraine,
“Sorry, I think I have practice for the school
play.” I grew numb to the weeping of my family.
Lolo was a shell, and so was I.
On April 19, 2008, I held Lolo for the last time. I
remember standing above his pale, stiff cadaver
as the man wiped his face with an acrid-
smelling ointment. My mother insisted that the
morgue was too heavy for a young girl like me,
but I insisted on going. I wanted to know what it
was like to look at a dead person enveloped
inside a cold casket. I expected Lolo to open his
eyes, sit up, stretch his arms and say, “That
was a good nap!” while ambling out of the
coffin with a glow on his face. It was a scary,
bizarre idea and when I touched the icy
coldness of his skin, I could not believe that I
wanted it to happen.
My family told me to give him a eulogy. I
declined. After watching Lola break down
during the wake, I was afraid that the same
thing would happen to me. I listened to my titos
and titas recite speeches, quote poetry or
movies that Lolo liked. Friends of his would
come up to the podium and repeat themselves
with: “Exequiel was a remarkable man” over
and over again. I went home with the words
generous and loving glued to my brain. My
chest tightened as I thought about them.
The post-funeral events kept my family busy.
Distant relatives would appear out of nowhere,
carrying baskets of wine or fruit and sending in
cards that read: “We offer our deepest
comforts.” So many people came to the house
to comfort my heartsick Lola, and I could not
count the number of masses we attended; how
many candles we lit; how many friends that told
me that my Lolo was in a better place. I
wondered if Lolo really went to heaven. When I
saw the flowers hanging on the knob of his
crypt, I knew that he did.
I was alone when I saw it. There hung a humble
bouquet of baby’s breath that was so small and
plain that it disappeared behind the extravagant
flower arrangements that spelled out Lolo’s
name. What drew me to it was the small card
attached to the thin ribbon that held the flowers
together. There were names written on it—the
names of Lolo’s other children. Below theirs
was Remedios’ signature. Remedios—the
woman who did not come to Lolo’s funeral, the
woman wom he had four children with, the
woman Lolo loved.
In that moment, I could see Remedios pacing
restlessly by her phone, waiting for somebody
to call the moment Lolo got his stroke. I could
imagine her hysterical in the arms of her
children, begging to see him as his brain
engorged its memories away. And I could
imagine her sneaking timidly into the crypt;
attaching the flowers to the knob and slipping
away before anybody could see her. Remedios
mourned alone.
I could have pulled out the flower, torn them up
like her cocktail dress and her letters and her
pictures. But I could only think of Lolo, how he
carried his other children the way he carried me
as I balanced gingerly on his shoulders when
he walked me down the shore. How he pointed
out the horizon, teased me for being scared,
and said, “You can try to swim so far and never
touch the sun,”—I realized that it was not
because Lolo did not know how to love, but it
was because he loved too much. I left the
flowers there, retreating back to the pew as my
family lit more candles and prayed. I thought of
his father walking out the door, the Japanese
soldiers tugging at his sisters’ hair; his
nonchalant mother smoking on the porch. It
was then when I stood up, joined my family and
prayed.
Physical Cheating
Simply put, physical cheating is the act of being sexually
intimate with someone other than your spouse or
significant other. It is one of the most common forms of
cheating. Although physical cheating is common among
men and women, it seems to affect men and women in
different ways. Men view physical cheating as
emasculating and a form of physical rejection. Women,
on the other hand, may be more likely to see beyond
the physical indiscretion if they perceive that emotions
were not involved.
Emotional Cheating
Emotional cheating may include physical intimacy but
not necessarily so. Emotional cheating may begin as an
innocent friendship. Eventually, an emotional cheater
finds himself intimately confiding in the person, sharing
thoughts, dreams and an emotional closeness that
would normally be reserved for his mate. In some ways,
emotional cheating is more crippling to a relationship
than physical cheating. With physical cheating, the
cheater may still feel emotionally connected to his
partner and may only be seeking to fulfill a sexual
fantasy. With emotional cheating, however, the
cheater's heart may no longer be in the relationship.
Cyber Cheating
With the popularity of the Internet, cyber cheating is
becoming a more common problem among couples.
Cyber cheating can come in a variety of forms. Cyber
cheating includes Internet pornography, online dating
and flirting with other people on social networking sites.
Cyber cheating is harder to catch than other forms of
cheating. It requires the couple to have access to one
another's computer passwords and to pay close
attention to conversations each person is having on the
Internet.
What Is Forgiveness?
Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a
conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of
resentment or vengeance toward a person or group
who has harmed you, regardless of whether they
actually deserve your forgiveness.
Just as important as defining what forgiveness is,
though, is understanding what forgiveness is not.
Experts who study or teach forgiveness make clear
that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or
deny the seriousness of an offense against you.
Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it
mean condoning or excusing offenses. Though
forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship,
it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person
who harmed you, or release them from legal
accountability.
Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of
mind and frees him or her from corrosive anger.
While there is some debate over whether true
forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the
offender, experts agree that it at least involves
letting go of deeply held negative feelings. In that
way, it empowers you to recognize the pain you
suffered without letting that pain define you,
enabling you to heal and move on with your life.
A cheater has to be remorseful about their
actions in order for forgiveness to happen Loss
of trust is normal, but it can be built back up If
both parties can't reflect on the pitfalls of their
relationship, it's doomed to fail
A crypt (from Latin crypta "vault") is a stone
chamber beneath the floor of a church or other
building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or
religious relics.
Creative nonfiction • a branch of writing that
employs the literary techniques usually associated
with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons,
places, or events. The genre of creative nonfiction
(also known as literary nonfiction) is broad enough
to include travel writing, nature writing, science
writing, sports writing, biography, autobiography,
memoir, the interview, and both the familiar and
personal essay.
• "Creative nonfiction . . . is fact-based
writing that remains compelling,
undiminished by the passage of time, that
has at heart an interest in enduring human
values: foremost a fidelity to accuracy, to
truthfulness." (Carolyn Forché and Philip
Gerard, Introduction, Writing Creative
Nonfiction. Story Press, 2001)
• "What Is Creative About Nonfiction?"
"It takes a whole semester to try to answer
that, but here are a few points: The
creativity lies in what you choose to write
about, how you go about doing it, the
arrangement through which you present
things, the skill and the touch with which
you describe people and succeed in
developing them as characters, the rhythms
of your prose, the integrity of the
composition, the anatomy of the piece (does
it get up and walk around on its own?), the
extent to which you see and tell the story
that exists in your material, and so forth.
Creative nonfiction is not making something
up but making the most of what you have."
(John McPhee, "Omission." The New
Yorker, September 14, 2015)
• A Checklist for Writers of Creative
Nonfiction
"[There] is a significant way in which
creative nonfiction differs from
journalism. Subjectivity is not required in
creative nonfiction, but specific, personal
points of view, based on fact and conjecture,
are definitely encouraged..."
(Lee Gutkind, "The Creative Nonfiction
Police?" In Fact. W.W. Norton & Company,
2005)
• Common Elements of Creative
Nonfiction
"[Creative nonfiction] can be identified by
these common elements: personal presence
(the author's self as spectator or participant,
whether on the page or behind the scenes),
self-discovery and self-motivation, flexibility
of form (the tendency for the form to arise
from the content rather than the content to
be contorted to fit an inverted pyramid or
fiveparagraph or similarly prescriptive
 model), veracity (to paraphrase Annie
Dillard, rendering the real world coherent
and meaningful either analytically or
artistically), and literary approaches
(drawing
on narrative techniques also used in fiction
or lyrical language also used in poetry or
dramatic rendering of scenes or cinematic
uses of pacing and focus)."
(Robert L. Root, The Nonfictionist's Guide:
On Reading and Writing Creative
Nonfiction. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)

• Walt Whitman on Writing About Real

Things
"Whatever may be the case in years gone by,
the true use of the imaginative faculty of
modern times is to give ultimate vivification
to facts, to science, and to common lives,
endowing them with the glows and glories
and final illustriousness which belong to
every real thing, and to real things
only."
( Walt Whitman, "A Backward Glance
O'er Travel'd Roads," 1888)

Also Known As
literary nonfiction, literary journalism,
literature of fact