Happy Birthday, Lola Tina

Today would have been her 76th birthday. 

Lola Tina, my maternal grandmother, left us four years ago, and I must say it was the first profound sorrow I felt in my life. I always spent my summer vacations with her in the province. She, together with my granpa, had a share of taking good care of my childhood life. 

I have a lot of simple but fond memories of her. I always remember her expressions and reactions when would tend our garden under the sweet smelling rosal, when we would feed our chickens in the backyard, when we would pick sweet pomelo that bore many fruits during the season, when we would walk down the poblacion to buy bread.

And though she has this tendency to hit the ceiling when she's in bad mood, my Lola Tina was a hard coated candy outside but a soft marsh mallow inside. She would come into my bed at dawn and hug me with her loving arms when she would hear me cry baby because I miss home. Now I still seem would want to cry, this time, because I miss her.

Yet every time I miss her nowadays, I think she has ways in which she makes her presence felt, comforting and loving. It must be her playing this old song over the radio sometimes. I don't know but it strikes a chord in me and I have this sudden remembrance of her when I happen to hear it.
 
Must be her own way of saying... It's not how long we held each other's hand / What matters is how well we loved each other / It's not how far we traveled on our way / Of what we found to say / It's not the spring you see, but all the shades of green...

It's not how long I held you in my arms / What matters is how sweet the years together / It's not how many summer times we had to give to fall / The early morning smiles we tearfully recall / What matters most is that we loved at all...

It's not how many summer times we had to give to fall / The early morning smiles we tearfully recall / What matters most is that we loved at all... / What matters most is that we loved at all. 

Sometimes I wonder, too, if there is a way she would ever know how I am doing today - if she is also beaming with pride every time I excelled or she misses me too like the way I do to her. I am sure she is happy in the hands of the Grand Seigneur up there and with our other loved ones who have gone before us all here.

Thank you for all the memories, Lola Tina. We love you and we always will. Please do know that you are remembered not only on this special day, but always in our lives.