Remembering Inday Nilda

She was my mother’s sister but I called her Inday Nilda, not Tita (Aunt) Nilda, as would have been customary. All of us kids called her by that name. She was  petite – smaller and shorter than my mother.  Unlike my mother who was a Castillian mestiza she was  brown-skinned, with straight, black hair: a pretty, vivacious woman who was straightforward to the point of being blunt  and quite a talker, in my child’s opinion.  Fun-loving and gregarious — she was the exact opposite of my  mother. I was told that Inday Nilda liked to hang out with her friends when she was single and to attend dances  (what we call parties, nowadays).  She wasn’t a homebody, for sure.  For all that side of her, she was the first in the family to become a born-again Christian and  to have led the rest of us to the faith.

Our clan on my mother’s side lived in the same neighborhood while we were  growing up.  If we kids were not in the house, we were probably there  at the other house where our extended family lived.  If my mother would ask, for example, where  the rest of my brothers were, I would answer, “Ato sa pihak” or  “There  on the other side”.  “The other side” in my child’s mind, then, became synonymous to their house --- my grandparents’ house--- Inday Nilda’s house.

Picking head lice was  a common past time, back in those days.  Inday Nilda loved to pick our heads.   She would sit us kids down, every  week or so to check, relishing the act of removing  the small hatchlings stuck close to the scalp and the big egg-laying females (butol).  The thing about it is if I came to her  and my head were clean (meaning lice-free), she would grumble and dismiss  me, disappointed.  I would be disappointed, as well as these sessions evoked sensations similar to having a scalp massage. 

Inday Nilda was blunt, like I said.  If I stank, she would blurt it out without batting an eyelash.  If I had a habit she didn’t  like she wouldn’t hesitate to say it to my face.  But for all that frankness, I liked Inday Nilda.  She was a girl’s mom.  She would have me sit down and braid my hair; even the more complicated French braid, she knew, too.    On occasions when I needed my hair done my mother would tell me to go to Inday Nilda.   In lieu of  the then uncommon gel or hair spray (pomade was used in those days), she would apply raw egg white to keep my hair together.   Then to make my face she would put regular lipstick  on her fingers and smudge  the color  on my cheeks as blush-on.  She was my handy hair and make-up artist. 

Inday Nilda was probably in her thirty’s when she became very sick,  her body reduced to a bag of bones.  I remember how  she would walk then, frail and bony with her stick arms swinging. It bothered me to see her like that.  She went   to my cousins’ school events and meetings or to church, nevertheless.  I even remember her coming to my school affairs.  She would mention how people would often remark how thin she was:  words  I knew she hated hearing, that may have ultimately led her to stop going out altogether. 

When I studied nursing in college and learned how to do injections, Inday Nilda would ask me to give her medications.  At this time they had already moved away from us and whenever I came  to give her shots she would thank me profusely, sometimes give me money and praise me for having such a soft, painless  touch.  It was a struggle for me to see her that way, her eyes sunken, her bones sticking out.  Despite her woes, she remained optimistic, still liked to  talked in the midst of  coughing spells, always encouraging me. I have known from my childhood days how she was a story-teller like my great grandmother.  The funny thing is, she also confessed to putting  pads in her pants to hide her flat buttocks back when she was younger and vainer.  Later on, when she got sicker she would talk about her dream   of waking up on a full moon night and seeing a vision of a lady sitting across her open window.  This was a story that I would remember her telling over and over.  There were also times when  words  alluding to  marital insecurities and infidelities  spilled out.  These glimpses into her tortured soul    distressed me somehow, hard as it were for me to understand, being yet a child.

It  was perplexing for me to think  why a young, vibrant mother in the prime of her life could have gotten sick  that way. My mom would tell me that she became ill soon after she had an IUD (intra-uterine device, a contraceptive device) removed.  The adults in our clan seemed to have no other explanation why she contracted her disease. And all her medications didn’t seem to work even as we watched her through the years die slowly before our eyes.

I missed Inday Nilda’s funeral.  Although I was in another part of the country, I still  could’ve come but didn’t.   I determined at  that time it was best for me to remember her alive. 

Once in a while I am gripped by  nostalgia and  wish I could be with Inday Nilda again. I miss her, it’s true.  I am glad, though, that I have my memories  of her … the happy ones that remain in the nooks and crannies of my mind.  These memories, like a “Spirit of Times Past,”  I can  summon out of the shadows of forgetfulness to remind me that like all our loved ones who have passed on, she does exist and that somehow in life  we had mattered to each other.

Truly,  in death she still matters  to me.