Today is the fifth anniversary of my grandmother’s passing. And despite what seems to be a long time since then, and despite the immense changes since 2013, my grandmother’s absence from the lives of her family is still acutely felt.

I said a few words for my grandmother at her wake in 2013, and amongst my remarks is a line that still holds true:

We’ve inherited a legacy from her. An inspiration for her entire family, Mama’s life is a legacy we are honored to live up to.

And I’m not just speaking to the fact that she was one of the first women to graduate summa cum laude from a co-ed university in the Philippines, or the fact that she was one of the most cultured and well-travelled people you’d have ever met. More than anything else, hers is a legacy of indomitability.

Born in 1921 to a family of comfortable means, my grandmother’s life was one in which she experienced first-hand the economic struggles of a world depression, the horrors of Japanese war crimes committed on Filipinos and Americans (one example includes the often-overlooked Manila Massacre of February 1945), the privations of political oppression, and in 2010, the death of her eldest daughter, Evelyn.

Yet through all this, my grandmother held an entire family together. Stalwart and strong, my grandmother was respected and loved by all.

For me, my grandmother inspired me to always excel and to never accept defeat. She taught me that obstacles exist because we need target practice. She taught me to appreciate classic films and the power of a sharp one-liner.

For my entire family, my grandmother’s legacy was larger than life. By sheer force of will and a work ethic that bounded oceans, she provided for her family in a time when women of her status were not expected to work; she ensured educations quality for all of her children and grandchildren; and most importantly, she pulled rank as materfamilias and moved her whole family lock-stock-and-barrel from the Philippines to the United States.

I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of courage this must have taken to uproot herself from her familiar homeland to the U.S., a country that barely forty years before had limited the immigration of Filipinos to 50 persons a year.

But more importantly, I cannot express enough gratitude at her foresight and her trust in the American Dream that in this bright new world, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren would find opportunities beyond anything that could be imagined for a family from Tiaong.

I have no real literary thoughts for today, nor do I have any intent to parallel my grandmother with the heroines and heroes of our favorite books, superhero comics, and poems. But I was thinking about some of the stories she used to tell me as a child. I remember a fable of a monkey (the matsing) and a turtle (the pagong) and the trickery that ensues over some bananas. The takeaways of the fable are simple: be kind, be clever, never judge by appearances, and if you have to play the game, play the game strategically without cutting corners so that you will be satisfied with the results.

Today, I’m reminding myself not to cut corners, because my grandmother sure as hell didn’t.

Remembering
Marina Q. Santos
20 July 1921 – 5 February 2013