personal

Breathe in, Breathe out

/ RCRuiz

February turned out to be a more challenging month as the flu struck and just as I was feeling better, shingles happened. I had this idea that I could get through shingles with just paracetamol, but after enduring a night with no sleep and pain that I can’t describe, I caved and asked my doctor for stronger pain relief. Thankfully, my doctor prescribed pain relief quickly and I have been able to sleep through the night which accounts for why I no longer need the pain relief. I do have this incredible itch where the shingles outbreak happened and a burning sensation pretty much like when you have a bad sunburn.

Recovery from shingles is a process, but I’m glad I’m able to come upstairs to the workroom and do some art practice as well as a little bit of writing.

I was inspired quite a bit by some of the work that I saw when I visited the art fair and had a conversation with an artist who was doing some live painting. That conversation made me think about my own approach to art and art making.

During our conversation, the artist told me that what’s important is to find your own gestures and your own signature. What is it about your art that makes you the artist that you are? Every artist has a signature–not the name you sign, but it’s in the language that exists between the artist and the blank canvas/page.

I think about this conversation as I draw without having a particular goal. I draw repetitions of shapes as a way of tuning in to what am I feeling, what am I thinking, and what is going on in my body and in my spirit today.

Breathe in, breathe out.

In today’s world where everyone seems to want to rush towards a goal or to achieve something or to become someone, being in the moment frees us of all those stresses. When we are free from those stresses of becoming something, we can listen to what our bodies tell us.

Small circles, gridlines, spirals, repetitive mark making and repetitive movements. All of these things are practices that ground us in the body and in the moment. And being grounded allows us to transcend to where we can see beyond the mundane.

I’m stopping here for today.

To you who reads this, thank you for dropping by. Blessings and peace.

Time

/ RCRuiz / 2 Comments

A dear friend recommended Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work to me and I’ve been reading out of The Sabbath and thinking about time. Heschel’s work is beautiful. It’s thought provoking–mysterious and deep and also accessible and relatable. More than that, it is moving.

I think of time as I prepare to go to the hospital for my second chemo infusion in what’s called a second line treatment. I think of time when the doctor tells me that we are buying time. I think of time and how each of us comes into this world not knowing just how much we have of it and how even when facing a disease like cancer, there is no way of measuring or saying–this is how much time or this is the only time you have got. Science can get us so far, but the measure of our time in this world is not something anyone can predict. I’m saying this because my mother was told she had one year to live when she was 46 years old and here we are…my mother will turn 87 this year.

And yes, it’s true that it’s possible to extrapolate based on data, but even data is no guarantee because there are always other factors that might come into play. The truth is, we all hope for more time, but the most important time we’re getting is now and as my mother always tells me: just live today.

I remember back in 2023, when they told me the cancer was not gone after all. Back then, the numbers were quite frightening and the feeling of precariousness was strong. Because of where the tumors were located, I was also in quite a bit of discomfort.

Today, where I had radiation, things are quiet. My doctor sent me on vacation with a smile on her face saying: you can go through the 10 weeks without medication and when you return we’ll start on treatment again. And in those 10 weeks, I walked a lot and climbed a lot and did muscle training and felt like I felt 10 years ago. I’m thankful for the muscle training now because chemo does a number on the body and the more fit you are physically, the better you are able to withstand treatment (that’s what I keep hearing). In the week when I get chemo, I don’t feel all too happy. I don’t know if I’m hungry or nauseous, I don’t know what to do about all the things I’m feeling. I don’t want to take the anti-nausea meds because of the headaches, but I also don’t want to be throwing up, so I take the nausea meds anyway because they do help me get through the week.

But the week passes. I wake up one morning and my stomach feels settled. I go out and take a walk. I go back to my physiotherapy class. I meet up with loved ones. I do things. And thankfully, this time, I can read and write.

I think of time and eternal time and time that is in the hands of the creator and I think of how it’s possible to see beyond now. To understand that there is a timeline running alongside the now that I see and that timeline stretches and branches into different directions and different possibilities and how we are limited only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be limited. There is enough time even when people tell us there is no time. There is time even when the data says there might not be enough time. There is time because time is not something that we can command or hold fast or measure or make secure. What happens in a second can be of infinite significance even if we don’t see it just yet.

A little while back, my brother asked me what my prognosis was. I really couldn’t say because my doctor couldn’t say. But the more I think on it, the more I wonder if it’s all that important. Even when I am writing a story, the outcome may not be in my control because I can only bring my characters to the end of a particular story but beyond that story possibilities branch out. The work of change is never done. It is constantly in motion and so what I can do is simply trust that all the small movements being done in the present will tell and count towards a future that’s better for those who come after this story is finished.

I am cradled in love and lifted by grace and always thankful for the hope that I see even when the world is chaotic and muddled and filled with so much chaos.

Agyamanac Unay for passing by. May you too be cradled and lifted in love.

Bucketlist

/ RCRuiz

There was a time when I was a struggling university student that I used to go with a girlfriend to one of the high-end shops in Ayala. My girlfriend was tiny and fair-skinned and looked like a princess and while she had to make do with her allowance (just like I had to) it was quite obvious that she was from a well-to-do family. In the Philippines, fairness is associated with wealth and my darker complexion as well as my non-fairylike appearance made that people tended to associate me as coming from a lower economic bracket. Not that I cared. But well…anyway…my girlfriend liked window-shopping and so we would window-shop at those high-end stores.

We had a planned dialogue, my girlfriend and I. She would try something on, come out of the changing room and ask me what I thought and I was supposed to say that I wasn’t quite sure if it was really her thing. Of course, she would later on squee about how much she liked it but as we were struggling students, just being able to see what it looked like on her was just as good as buying things.

During one of these outings, she proposed making a list of things to buy. She showed me her list and said I should write one too. To humor her, I also made a list of things which included a watch from some upscale brand. We later parted ways and as tends to happen, we lost touch.

I have to laugh today because I just sat down to write a bucket list (entirely different from the list of things to buy…but it had me thinking of her). She had a pretty long list by the end of one year and I never found out if she went back to buy anything.

The bucket list I’m making seems to keep on growing and I find myself wondering how many people have bucket lists and what happens to those lists should they go uncompleted?

Just this week, I had a long talk with my GP. It was a great talk because we talked about my diagnosis and the implications of where I am in right now. One of the things she said to me was that I had the happy characteristic of being someone who was able to see the good in life no matter the circumstance. I suppose it’s true. I can’t control or change the circumstances, so I don’t really see the point or the use of crying or complaining about it (although I do sometimes grumble about it).

In the meantime, I’ve started on my bucket list and it’s already got thirty things on it. I think of something someone said to me–this is someone who went through a cancer scare and had the works and is now clean. He told me that his partner made a portrait of him while he was in hospital. It was a portrait in pencil, but his eyes staring out from the portrait are striking and full of life. He said to me that his partner had said: Oh, your eyes are good. They’re full of life. You’re going to be okay. I think to myself: but look, I am still full of life, aren’t I? And I think: I am still okay.

Today, I am preparing for tomorrow. Today, I am writing a list. Today, I have the energy to go out and bring things away. Today, I can pick up groceries and cook and prepare for the weekend. Today, I can be present for my youngest son who is still at home. Today, is full of possibility and there is still a lot of today left.

So, today I decided to share on here a close-up detail from one of my paintings. I liked this unexpected detail because it made me think of how while we only see the now moment, we don’t know how today affects everything that unfolds around us. So, let’s just keep on living and doing all that we can today.

Blessings and peace and Agyamanac Unay for reading.

A restless time of year

/ RCRuiz

I’ve recently found myself feeling quite restless. Perhaps it’s because the year is coming to a close, perhaps it’s because the novel I wanted to finish this year is stuck in second draft around the 30,000 word count (there’s still time to finish it though).

I am looking forward to 2024 when I hope to be able to attend the MILFORD writer’s retreat and spend time immersed in the writing (as well as catching up with good friends).

I find myself thinking of liminal spaces and how there’s this restless energy found in that space of being in-between. While it’s good to be in liminal space, to remain there for a long time can sometimes be more harmful than helpful for the creative spirit. I think of a passage from Stella Adler’s book where she writes about “life being out there” and how engaging with what is out there, engaging with life and with the world is what makes us grow and thrive as artists.

Energy that we cultivate in the liminal space has to find an outlet. As a person who was given a diagnosis and is in treatment, I can make a choice to remain in liminal space or I can choose to take the energy I’ve harvested from liminality and put it to use as I engage with the world and step out into life.

I ask myself: what do I want to do? How can I do it? What do I want to achieve? How can I get there?

For me, it starts by going back to the waiting page.

Life continues. I teach. I write. I make art. I make music. I share what I can. I mother my sons. I pick up the threads of life and make a decision to keep on living. Circumstances may change the course of our trajectory, but what matters is what we do and how we respond.

It’s strange how having written these words makes me feel more rooted somehow. I may not know and yet I know. And that’s enough for now.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and may you find strength in your own journey.

Personal post: my son’s investment

/ RCRuiz

After Jan’s passing, eldest son gifted me with a set of weights and an exercise mat. I’d been contemplating a gym subscription but I just couldn’t seem to take that first step. So, when eldest son asked me what was on my birthday wishlist, I thought I’d ask for stuff for exercising at home. I thought: a mat would do or a pair of dumbbells. I remember expressly pointing out some things that I thought were student-level price. (He was also saving up for his own computer, so I didn’t want him to spend a lot.)

I was rather flabbergasted when the packages arrived. Apparently, he’d done some research and opted for his own (more expensive) choices instead of what I had pointed out to him.

In the first year, I shed a couple of pounds and started to feel stronger. When I flexed my arm, I could feel something that felt like muscle. So I took the plunge and signed up at our local gym. My goal: more muscle definition please and make me stronger.

In times when I’ve wrestled with anxiety, I’ve found that a good workout tends to keep the worst of it bay. I’m able to clear my mind for a while as I focus on just making it through a set number of reps and sets.

Today, I thought back to that time after he got his first job at a local supermarket. I think of the late nights and long hours that he pulled and how that was the year he told me that he didn’t need pocket money anymore. I remember how flabbergasted I was when I realised just how much he’d spent on my birthday present and I remember him saying that I should think of it as him investing in me.

The returns on Joel’s investment have come in as we now use that set each time we workout during the week. It’s fun, it gives some sort of structure to days where hours seem to blend into each other, and I guess I’m vain enough to be pleased that the muscle I’ve gained won’t fade during the lockdown.

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( The 3 kilo dumbbells are a recent addition, and these shoes have been with me since I started working out 5 years ago. I have a 5 kilo disk on my birthday wishlist. I’ve read that weight training is important for women as we grow older as it helps maintain bone density and keeps our joints supple. What I can say is this: five years ago, I couldn’t run up and down the stairs, these days I can.)

When the world opens up

/ RCRuiz

A remarkable thing happened to me this past weekend.

We spent the weekend with a group of Dutchy friends in an area close to where we had had our last family vacation together with Jan.

There is a process to grief and grieving and I suppose that I had become quite an adept in avoiding certain places or things that would remind me of the past and of loss. It may sound strange, but I think a lot of my coping process lay in avoiding the painful parts and focusing on the present.

So there we were, out on a walk in the countryside, and my eldest son suddenly says: Mom, isn’t this the place where we spent our last holiday?

That last holiday was memorable, not only because it was the last one, but also because we were staying at a really nice place with a lovely view of mountains and with a road going down to the river where the kids spent a number of afternoons wading or trying to make pebbles skip on the surface of the water.

That’s not possible, I said to my eldest son.

But even as I said the words, we rounded the bend and there was a familiar sight. The same road, we had argued over taking, the same road going up to the apartments where we had rented a room.

And just like that, I was in tears.

The great thing about Dutch people is how discrete they can be and how they will let you be alone with whatever it is you need to be alone with unless you ask for company to share that moment with you.

Later that day, in a conversation with another mother, the subject of my writing came up. It is very strange to talk about your work as a writer when you feel like you aren’t one anymore. But we talked about it and about her seven year old daughter who writes small interesting stories. She asked me how long I had been writing and I told her that I had dictated my first story to my mother when I was three or four years old. She told me about her daughter doing the same thing with her. And as we talked, I realised how good it felt to be able to encourage someone–to be able to encourage a possible young writer in the art of storytelling. (It was also very lovely to meet a Mom who was keen on encouraging their child’s creativity in this way.)

In that moment, I felt a shift in myself. I don’t know how to describe it, but on the trip back, I kept thinking of the word Alive.

I also thought of the conversation I had with one of Jan’s closest friends and of how he told me about the world narrowing down when his father died and how at a certain point, the world opened up again. Different, changed, but no longer a tunnel.

I am still quite astounded by it and so I had to write it here. To mark it in some way.

Pain and loss have marked us, but we are alive and the world has opened up. We are no longer in the tunnel. I am finally allowing myself to look forward with something more than just the will to survive and to make a life.

I started writing again over the weekend. It is still raw and unfinished, but it is honest and truthful and it is science fiction.

Slow small step

/ RCRuiz

It has been quite a while since I wrote on this blog. My last entry was full of hope and looking forward and since then, life happened as it always does.

There have been moments when I wanted to erase myself from the world. When I wanted to give up, to just vanish, to just be no more.

My kids lost their father, their aunt and their grandfather. All within a short span of time. I lost a husband, a beloved sister and a father.

How do you write about such things? How do you help your children cope with loss when some days feel like a never-ending dream with empty spaces?

I am writing in this space because I need to remind myself that the journey has also had its beautiful moments. I need to commemorate the fact that we are here now and that my children are in a much better space than we were a year ago. I am in a much better space than I was in the preceding months of this year. I am able to sit down and write and I am able to raise my head and look to the future again.

Sometimes, I will encounter a friend or an acquaintance who hasn’t heard about our past 21 months.

How do you answer the question “How are you doing?”

I am doing as well as I can and coping as best as I can. In these past months it has meant not being on social media. It has meant limiting everything that requires energy. It has meant letting go of so many things.

I have sometimes wondered if I will be able to write again. Words seem meaningless sometimes. But here I am, writing words. I guess, this is how it is. Because I live so much in words, it won’t be real if I don’t write it.

One Sunday evening before going to bed, my youngest son told me how much he missed his father.

“I know,” I said to him. “I know exactly how you feel.”

I also know what it’s like to have to miss a father.

Moving forward means acknowledging loss and the pain of loss.

The Dutch have a great way of expressing the moment of acknowledgment: stilstaan.

A minute of silence. A moment of pondering. A time when everything falls still.

Our time has started up again. Slow small steps. We are moving forward.

You don’t get over it

/ RCRuiz

I am reading a book about grief and grieving children. Sometimes I think that with the passage of time, we will get over it. If I am strong enough. If I am cheerful enough. If I keep a positive outlook and greet everyday with a gung-ho attitude…we will reach a space where we are no longer grieving.

For a while, I hated the idea that my children were without a father. My first impulse being to do something, to find something–to reach out and fill up that gap. But slowly, I am coming to recognise that there is no filling up that gap because it is already filled. My kids are not without a father.

Yesterday, I learned that one of my friends had lost his father in a brutal wrenching away of life. This friend was 19 years old when it happened.

I told him about my youngest son weeping over the fact that he could no longer recall the sound of his father’s voice.

“It’s okay,” my friend said. ( Youngest son was listening in as we were talking on skype.)

“Your memory becomes a bit vague. You forget how he sounded. Sometimes, you don’t remember what he looked like. But you look at photos and you remember the feeling. The feeling is the most important thing.”

It dawned on me then that no matter his physical absence, their father will always be present with us. He is here in our memories and in the feelings that we have when we think or talk about him.

I think of conversations I’ve had with the kids–about boats and distant shores and rowing together.

My kids are not fatherless. Their Dad is always with us. In memories and in the feeling.

What it’s like

/ RCRuiz

Today, someone asked me what it feels like.

“I mean, you lost your husband and then now you’ve lost your sister.”

How do you put into words what it feels like to lose the other half of your heart?  She was always there–my sister. In the darkest periods of my life, I hang onto the thought that my sister was always there. She was witness to my wildest dreams and imaginings and she was the person I confided in the most in times of deep despair. She loved me steadfastly even when she didn’t agree with the choices I made and even when it grieved her to see me walk away from the path that was familiar to us both.

I have a memory of my elder sister from when we were in grade school. Back then, going to school meant climbing down the mountain path to the gravelled road and then a 10-15 minute hike to the central school. I was always slow back then and a little bit of a spoiled child.

(My sister, being much quicker on her feet always was at least a few feet in front of me. )
In this memory, my sister has reached the bend in the mountain path–a couple of meters down from home. I am still at the top of the path. It had rained in the night and the path was a bit slippery and being the scaredy-cat that I was, I wanted my sister to come back and help me down the slippery slope. She, on the other hand, was already impatient to go to school because the first bell had already rung.

I remember my sister telling me to hurry up and I remember crouching there and crying for her to come get me.

Finally, she came marching back up the mountain slope. I still remember the look on her face.

Regardless of how aggravated she was, she helped me down from the top of the slope. She held my hand until we got to a place where the earth was less slippery.

My heart aches.

I have so many memories. Of stories shared in the dark of night after the lights went out–of listening for the crunch of gravel outside our bedroom window–of running up and down the mountainside.

There are not enough words to say what it’s like.

 

 

My sister

/ RCRuiz

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Yesterday, my neighbour brought me lights for my sister. I made a spot on the living room table with these roses that seem to keep on blooming and a print of a happy selfie from the time my sister was here with me.

Loss is an ache inside my chest and it takes a lot of effort to keep on going.

One never dreams or hopes of losing their sister. I never thought or imagined that I would lose mine so soon. How is it possible?

My sister who I laughed with and cried with. The one I fought with and made up with. My sister who always won the contest over who got the read the books first…because she was (of course) the eldest. My sister who irritated me and encouraged me; who challenged me and didn’t hesitate to confront me. My sister who lives in so many of my stories; whose voice I hear when I am on the verge of throwing in the towel. My sister who refuses to let me give up and surrender.

My sister.

My sister who started the bookblog together with me; who made me understand that there are readers who just want to enjoy a book and who see its flaws but love it anyways because that’s how they are.

I remember fiery discussions over the dinner table, pillow fights in the bedroom, whispers in the night when the lights went out, secret conspiracies, mad adventures.

My sister who saw no need to conform to societal expectations but who chose to be exactly as she was.

My sister who loved and forgave wholeheartedly. My god. I shall miss my sister. There are not enough words for the agony of this loss.

I can only go on and do as she would tell me to do. Live because you have your sons. Live because you must write. Live because your path in life is not yet done. I must live because she wanted me to. Someday, I too will pass through the veils. I will see her then.