True Love

We prayed the rosary early today. It’s a common ritual for the family that when All Saints and All Souls Day come, we prepare something for our dead relatives and make an offering at the altar and recite the rosary just for the intention of praying for their souls and all souls in purgatory.  And as usual it’s pancit bihon and bibingka. Since Mom will be going home soon, she told me that she will lead the rosary prayers in our dialect which is Pangasinan. I am not really well-versed with the translated version so she prays in Pangasinan , hubby answers in Pangasinan too while Josef and I pray in English. So you could just imagine that sometimes, mom gets lost because of it.

Anyway, that isn’t why I am writing this blog. I want to capture Mom’s mood right after we had our afternoon snack and she was humming an unfamiliar tune in our dialect. Then she asked me  if I want to listen to it so I just nodded. With a smile on her face, she got a small typewritten piece of paper inserted in her  Pangasinan prayer-book and showed it to me before she started singing. I was amazed when she told me that Dad wrote it for her decades ago. There was no title except these words: “This song is heartily dedicated to my one and only love.”   I had goosebumps reading it and thought of Dad and everything that I remember about him when he was alive.  I knew that he used to compose songs and play them later on the guitar but this was the first time that Mom showed these lines to me. I could not completely decipher the meaning of every word but the thought was all about true love.  I am sharing it here so I could go back to it and will try to translate  it  in English when I have time. It was written in five stanzas, four lines each.

                                    1. Say sipan kod sica

                                        Talimaey katooran

                                        Say datngen kon irap caermenan

                                       Sicay papel na liknaan

                                 2. Siglaot na malet tan arowan

                                      Solo Patey so mamocnal

                                      Say aroc tan say magter con laman

                                     Signot mon kien legay bilay

                               3. Sasalien ililibang libang

                                    So nonot cod sican naynay

                                   Adarom laloc ya nanonotan

                                  Diad isip agnabural.

                            4. Gala pani ta punas moy ermen

                                 Ed singim iran pacatempey

                               Tano onia permi lilicnaen

                              Pilit ya datnen koy patey

                        5. Bagta licnay agnalambenan

                            Dicta cay puson lingkuran

                            Labien coni naandi yan bilay

                          Aleg labat lan manlamang.

Back when I was in grade school, I used to see letters written in lines and curves and I was curious how they can even understand each other writing that way. I asked mom about it and she said it was in Steno. I learned later that Stenography is a course in short and swift writing  by using symbols to shorten the words. That early curiosity lead me to take up two semesters of secretarial course before moving on to get my degree in Economics. Yes, it was because of the Steno that I enrolled in it. It was not a piece of cake, it was harder than I thought.

Looking back, I remember the times when Dad was already weak due to dialysis treatment. He still found time to share stories on what life was  after World War II, the struggles he had to undergo to make both ends meet, so to speak.  I never saw them quarrel infront of us, their children.  If there is one thing that I could say proudly, Mom is lucky to have been loved by a man like Dad. And I am sure it was true love.

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