A child's memoirs 2 : Ashes

I honestly have written another post for today, but changed my mind to post it. Another day is fine. 

As my country the Philippines have been having one typhoon to another, leaving devastations in their wake, I want to write about a loss, our house, leaving my aunts and one of my brothers who was in high school homeless at some point when I was a 3rd grader. My parents, me and my other brother were living at the teachers' accommodation somewhere South of Ilocos Sur, a 2 hours drive away from Vigan in Pudoc, Tagudin. 

Living in Pudoc

We rarely go home to our hometown then as my parents' money went to my sisters' university fees in Manila, month after month. Suffice to say, my parents' salaries were all accounted for. But then again where we lived, money was not needed. There were always food in the table, fruits-bearing trees abound inside the school's compound and all the teachers were being gifted with rice and vegetables by the locals, in gratitude for working there. All the teachers were either from Vigan or near it as no one wanted to teach in that place, the access was difficult. At that time also, teaching graduates preferred to teach where they are from and PUDOC had have no teaching graduates then as yet.

It was just me and my brother who are the kids as the other teachers were alone, leaving their husbands with their kids in their own hometown. It was just my parents who were both teachers, having to follow my dad's sister as the school's principal, though my aunt was already retired by the time I was there. An older post have mentioned Auntie Teresa, it was she who established the school in Pudoc.

A house fire

The news came about during school hours and somebody came to the school to tell my parents hearing the news on radio. The town haven't got any electricity as yet and it is backward a bit with its' living conditions. We had to rush home to see my aunts and my brother as from the news, our house was totally destroyed.

Heaps of ashes can be seen all throughout of what was left of the house on the ground. With a background of one remaining corner of a concrete wall that was left standing. Our lot wasn't all barren without our house, it have wide gardens having fruit-bearing trees in the backyard. Our house was one of the typical old Spanish houses prominent in our town at the time, all wood in the top floor with concrete walls in the ground floor. 

For the remaining days of our stay, we were living at a relatives' house ground floor room, one house away. The fire brigade attended to them first as a small fire was starting in theirs. The house in between was ravaged too by the fire.

A shack

It was built upon that remaining wall till my Dad sorted our finances by having an early retirement. It was used to build a small house, incomplete in a lot of ways. I stayed with my mom till 4th grade, then went back to our hometown for the remaining years of grade school and stayed there till I finished high school.

I miss that old house, I can still see it before my eyes, as clear as the day. There will be instances where I recall hanging out from our windows talking to friends down the street before running downstairs to be with them, watching parades etc. Our house was in the corner of our lot, located at the intersection so things aren't missed in both sides of the street.

In that old house, life was all sand and the sea, all rainbows after the rain. Life indeed was beautiful... with no storm in the horizon. 

The fire changed all that. When life becomes difficult, so are the people you live with. 

A loss to overcome

I was young and we were not presently living there when it happened so perhaps the shock wasn't that terrible maybe as my brother and i were protected from all the troubles my parents had to go through after the fire. My dad wasn't ready to retire by the time he was 60, but that was the only option he had. His pension wasn't the greatest but we made do. My younger brother had to be sent away to my uncle in Mindanao for college as he didn't want to stop school to wait for our elder siblings to graduate college. That left my mom working to send us to college till I graduated with a little help from my elder siblings. 

Lossing a house, the security that it provides...

Where can a family go from here? Financial help is much needed to cover the basics, but this is dependent to whoever is providing it. 

As a family then, we were very thankful to our relatives for letting us stay at their house. But before we left for Pudoc at that time, our shack was liveable for my aunts and my other brother. My dad after retiring wasn't doing anything to provide for us. With nothing to do, he gambled his pension and spent his days playing mahjong.

The loss brought about by the fire was a challenged to my family in a lot of ways. It changed our lives dramatically and unexpectedly. Afterwards, it was my mom who picked up the pieces. The hard work were all hers.  Personally, I saw a life that I refuse to experience again. In some ways, it moulded me to what I am today.

The liquid payout of this post will be donated to @steemph for its' Typhoon Relief Project that will be coming out soon to help our kababayan in their time of need after the Urduja and Vinta typhoons.