Amazing serenity

By Jose Sison

Last Sunday, March 8, 2009, my family was at “Heaven’s Gate” to commemorate in advance the sixth death anniversary of our only daughter Joyce which falls today, March 10, 2009. “Heaven’s Gate” is the memorial park at the hills of Antipolo which is the gravesite of Joyce. Somehow the place seems so aptly named especially last Sunday when I felt we were at heaven’s gate meeting and greeting Joyce; and reminiscing and renewing those times when we were still together, particularly during the last moments before she entered it.

That sense of closeness to Joyce and memories of the times of our life together is stronger this year as we bade goodbye just ten days ago to one of her cousins, Menchu Sison who has also reached heaven’s gate at the end of her earthly sojourn last February 27, 2009. The windy hills of Antipolo last Sunday afternoon is so conducive to envisioning a scene where Joyce is welcoming Menchu at heaven’s gate with a big, warm hug.

This is a scene that looks so vivid and stirring because of the many parallelisms in the lives of these two young girls. Both of them served as numerary members of the Opus Dei. Menchu was one of Joyce’s cousins who became close to her and followed her at Opus Dei. The others are the ever smiling Tina and the jolly good girl Dottie who are both still serving God in this world as numerary members.

The most striking part in the life of Joyce and Menchu is how they lived it. Joyce herself best described it when she once wrote: “I have always been happy wherever I am and just lived what I have seen I have to do. I consider my life as simple, simplified even with my sickness, by the idea that all I have to do is to love; Simplify life, love! Manifest that love in whatever may be asked of you at each moment”.

Menchu, like Joyce also died after a lingering bout with the deadly cancer. They accepted their affliction and suffering with amazing grace and serenity. Even as they experience pain, they can still manage to smile as their thoughts remain centered on others. In fact during her last moments the words coming out of Menchu’s dying lips were “thank you, thank you” and “I am sorry, I am sorry”. Thus I was no longer surprised when I heard for the first time at the homily during Menchu’s funeral mass that when Joyce was already ill, Menchu even wrote a letter asking to take the place of Joyce in her sufferings. More than a proof of how close the cousins had become, they have shown us the reason for their serenity and calmness amidst pain and suffering — by always thinking of others and not of themselves.

And so as we commemorate the sixth death anniversary of our daughter Joyce, allow me to share with you some of her words when she was already stricken with cancer:

“When symptoms appear pointing to a possible grave illness, the first thing you have to do is undergo some tests until you get to know what you really have. This is the hardest part of the sickness, I’d say, because of the unknown factor. We are usually afraid of the unknown - What is this? How grave is it? Am I to live long or will I die soon? Can I take the pain – physical or moral - those I will and those my loved ones will feel? The sooner you get to know what you have, the better. You can only fight once you know who or what your enemy is. And I was going through this stage during the merry days of Christmas. Blessed Josemaria taught us to judge events with the eyes of eternity, with the logic of God. So I looked at the coincidence of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word with the incarnation of a tumor. And what do I arrive at? A greater devotion to Our Lady! I saw the succeeding events in her life as those which are to take place in mine – the joys and sorrows, anxieties and abandonment in her bearing a child have a great parallelism in my bearing a tumor…Our founder would also teach us to live in divine filiation, to consider frequently that we are children of God and have to behave as one at all moments. So, if I am with my loving Father God and He sends me this, what do I have to fear? Besides my Daddy wrote this note to me (Blessed Josemaria would tell us that we owe 90% of our vocation to our parents): He knows you, he loves you and he will give you only what is best for you.