VINCENT Espiritu recalled seeing orbs of light back when he was seven. At that moment, his entire house was engulfed in darkness due to a brownout, making it hard for him to fall asleep. Hours passed until the hands of the clock, illuminated by the minute amount of light from the candle he refused to blow out, indicated that it was already early morning. His eyes moved to the direction of the wooden ceiling, where only dancing shadows occupied its blankness.
He never expected to see a glowing orb emerge from the ceiling, passing through the wooden surface as if it was not there at all. He was startled for a while, refusing to move as the orb floated around his r oom. But his surprise was soon replaced by awe as he watched the orb being joined by other floating orbs in the air which, strangely, did not frighten him. It was as if he was just staring at a candle’s dancing flame, only without the wax that kept the flame grounded and the wick that ensured that it would burn out inevitably.
He eventually began seeing them more often, even during the day. No one listened to him when he pointed at the orbs that, apparently, only he could see them. He stopped trying to convince people until he grew up and seized seeing the orbs himself.
It was only now during his mother’s burial that they appeared to him again.
“Vincent, it’s almost time. Are you ready?” his Aunt Maricar, his mother’s older sister, asked him as he was staring at his mother’s casket.
“Yes, tita. I will be there in a second,” he replied. He watched her go back to her seat as he muttered, “Parasites.”
He was going to give a eulogy for his mother, Josefina, and he did not know where to start. He had originally planned to cite all the good things his mother had done, especially for a family that chained her to a life that she never wanted.
“I never wanted to become the katulong of my family,” Josefina, even during the days when she wasn’t struggling with tuberculosis, kept telling him. She wanted to become a singer, but she got caught in the usual drama of a family spoiling her aspirations.
Josefina never left her parents’ house. Her parents had this twisted idea that, being the youngest in her family, she should devote her life in taking care of them. For them, cooking meals, cleaning the house, washing dishes and clothes, and tending to their other needs did not require her to finish a degree. Anything that might have given her a semblance of happiness or freedom was harshly done away with by her parents and Maricar. Maricar was the fortunate one. Being the eldest, she was allowed to have her own life outside the walls of her parents’ house, provided that she sent them money every month. It might not have been total freedom, but it was better than what her younger sister had to go through. Maricar made sure that it was Josefina who was the prisoner.
Josefina and her childhood friend, the only man who managed to get to know her outside her house, had planned to elope one day. But on the night when they were supposed to run away together, Maricar caught them and alarmed their parents. They drove Josefina’s lover away, not knowing that she was already carrying their child. Vincent never even had the chance to meet him. All he knew about him was that he was “a good man,” an idealized image that he grasped, even with the knowledge that he never really knew anything about him.
Vincent remembered his mother’s calloused hands caressing his cheeks and hair as she lulled him to sleep. No matter what song she sang and despite her beautiful voice, she always sang with a certain heaviness, as if even her voice was chained down. Josefina’s hands and voice always made his heart feel like sinking to the ground. Rather than be soothed to sleep by his mother’s singing, Vincent tried his best to escape that feeling of constraint.
When her life of unwanted and undeserved domestication finally took its toll on her, she did not give a fight. Months before she died, Vincent saw her throwing her medicines away just outside their house. Pills that were supposed to save her life were crushed under her feet as she looked at the sky. She closed her eyes as she faced the setting sun, saying the words, “Take me. Take me.”
Looking at the candles surrounding his mother’s casket, Vincent took in a deep breath and began to cough as he inhaled the smoke. The flames from the candles kept being blown out by the wind, leaving only smoke that rose from their wicks, even after the flames had long been put out. After coughing out the bad air, he walked unsteadily to the front to give his eulogy.
Even as he was walking, he strained for the words that would idealize his mother’s life; words that would make it sound like her struggles were worth her imprisonment. It was only when he was already staring at the people in front of him, people who never gave so much as a sincere “thank you” to his mother, did he decide to do away with any pretensions of a happy life he was constructing for his mother. Looking back at his mother’s casket, he began to speak.
“My mother, Josefina Espiritu,” Vincent began, “was a puppet.” He heard a gasp but he just kept talking. “She did not have her own life. Her parents and her only sister treated her like she was less than a maid. They took everything from her. They were the ones who drove her to death! They’re the ones who should be buried now!” His eyes brimmed with hatred as he exclaimed every word, stopping only after his Aunt Maricar got up, went up to him, and slapped him.
They began to lower the casket into the ground. Donned in their black ensembles to signal their grief, the people continued to cry as Josefina’s body descended into darkness.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the priest said.
But while everyone else looked down toward the hole in the ground with frowns on their faces, Vincent, looked up to the sky with surprise and a strange hint of joy.
He could swear by his mother’s grave that he saw the orbs of light again, dissolving, floating upward until Vincent could no longer set the sun and the orbs apart, moving toward a place where candle wicks or waxes no longer bounded flames, where not even the strong winds could reach and extinguish the light and the heat ever again.
