Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Looking back...

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 8:00 AM

. 4 years have passed. Whenever I look back at the trauma I've been through, I cannot help but thank God for the strength and equanimity He gave me during that ordeal. I have been very dependent on my late husband for 7 years that his 40 day stay in the Surgical ICU almost drove me mad because I didn't know whether he would die or live.  I couldn't sleep because for 7 years, I was used to hearing his voice before the day ended. What made matters worst was that hospitals in Dubai weren't like our hospitals here where one could visit anytime he wanted to or even sleep in the patient's room. They had visiting hours there, 4pm-6pm Sunday-Thursday and 10-12am, 4-6pm on Fridays and Saturdays. And children below 12 weren't allowed. I  was taking care of my Kz full time then but thankfully  my in-laws took shifts in watching over Kz while I was inside the SICU of Rashid Trauma Center. And since only 2 visitors were allowed at a time, I sometimes had to give way for church members, friends and family who wanted to see Floren. Yes, I was so dependent on him that I couldn't even cook dinner without asking him first what he wanted to eat. I would drive him to work at 9 am, and fetch him from the office at 6pm, and in between those 9 hours, I would call him every hour simply because I couldn't function without him. I was dependent, insecure and immature. Thankfully I had a husband whose patience was enough for Rome to proclaim him a saint.

I was also far from my immediate family and I know it was me who put my papa under stress because I had to call them everyday 11pm UAE time (3am Manila time)because I had to talk to someone as the silence of the night drove me crazy those days when I didn't know if Floren would come out alive or just die.

I also remember my faith then. When Floren had his 2nd aneurysm rupture and was proclaimed brain dead when he arrived at the hospital, I fought for my faith. Doctors told me they could no longer do anything for him. I didn't understand it then, because Floren survived his 1st aneurysm rupture even when there was a 9hour interval before he was brought to surgery. So why couldn't the doctors do anything for his brain this time when only minutes have passed since his brain started to bleed?  The neurosurgeon could only say it was impossible. And from my mouth I told that Muslim doctor, "WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU IS POSSIBLE FOR MY GOD!". I waited and waited for days for that miracle. No brain dead person ever survived in the history of men. I was so steadfast in my faith that it could have moved mountains then. I knew my God could do it... But it was not a matter of what my God could have done. It was whether He wanted it done. I was too blinded with wanting Floren to live that I forgot that his surviving the 1st  brain aneurysm rupture WAS MY MIRACLE. The doctors couldn't really explain why he survived without neurological defects then. They couldn't explain why after the rupture, his aneurysm healed itself by calcifying. And for the days when Floren was sedated , his encounter with God was his miracle. He woke up knowing he was already forgiven , that his sins , though they may have been as red as scarlet, God made his slate as white as snow. That was his miracle.

And my personal miracle was how I survived those days. I didn't have a job. I only had 50dirhams in my pocket. Floren's salary was to go to the banks because they had been pestering me for weeks that if I couldn't update our credit card bills they would be forced to take the case to the police.But God provided all my needs then. In fact, I had more than what I needed. Somebody even gave me money to go shopping. Every time I needed to go somewhere, there was always a parking lot right in front of the door or entrance. Somebody commented I didn't look like i have just been widowed for all they could see was a face that was so radiant. The day after they took Floren off the ventilator, I was the one who processed all the papers needed for us to fly back home with his remains. And people were surprised I still had the strength and peace to do that. I even stood in front of hundreds of our church members and talked about God's goodness even if He had to say NO to my prayers. Yes, God said NO, to all those who prayed, to the thousands of Christians back in the Philippines who prayed for Floren, to me who prayed every single hour, to me who fasted and read the Bible. I realized No amount of prayers could have saved Floren from the brink of human death because what God had planned was for Floren to start enjoying his eternal life  in heaven.

Looking back, I think that was pushed me away from God after we buried Floren. It was like everything just sank in that I suddenly became disappointed with God because I was a good and faithful servant then, why couldn't He have answered that one prayer? He answered my financial needs, almost all my prayers, but why deny me that one thing I would have given up my life for? I didn't know then what Grace was.. After that, I went through post traumatic stress disorder. It started on the first week of August (Floren had his 1st brain hemorrhage on May 14, went home June 9, his 2nd aneurysm rupture on June 10 and legally died June 24 and was buried July 10,2009.)  I stopped crying after we buried him and suppressed all the pain inside me. One night I woke up gasping for breath. I thought I was having a heart attack. They rushed me to the hospital and the ECG said there was nothing wrong with my heart. I started having night terrors after that. I started fearing going out to public places alone because what if I couldnt breathe? Who would help me? I started being afraid of shopping malls, public transportation... I would wake u every now and then screaming and begging to be brought to the hospital because I felt like I was having a heart attack. I carried with me a device that showed my oxygen level in the blood and my heart rate(Oximeter). I panicked at the thought of going to places without a hospital nearby. And the worst was when I started taking baths with the door open because I felt like I was going to die inside the bathroom that I began stopping to take baths at all because I did not want to die.  I still vividly recall all the panic attacks caused by my PTSD. I refused to take the sedatives the doctors prescribed because I told myself I wasn't crazy. I even spent months locked inside my room forgetting to take care of my daughter and instead watched tv 24hrs/day.

Now 4 years after, I have moved on. I have finally forgiven myself for Floren's death. Yes I blamed myself. Why, that I cannot tell. But I am alive once again. Yes, I have learned to love someone. I may not love him the same way I loved Floren, but I sure love him with the same intensity and everyday it gets deeper and deeper. And I will love him until my very last breath... But growing up and allowing myself to transform into the woman God has always designed to me become has to come first. I cannot give myself fully to another person until God has made me whole again. And I am allowing Him to do so. Because I believe I went through that ordeal with Floren to prepare me to be the best match for the person God has in store for me---

I haven't written in a long time. And this feels so good.

What will define my strength is how I rise up today. I am finally over his death. The pain will always remain there, I will always miss him. But I am over his death. I have forgiven myself and accepted God's will. And now I am looking forward to proving I am beautiful and special because God created me that way.

 

Saturday, December 1, 2012

to love again

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 10:43 AM

I have opened my heart to love again....

And I am happy. Maybe one of the reasons God allowed me to go through such excruciating pain was for me to realize the value of relationships. And learn from my selfish mistakes of the past. Maybe it was His way of preparing me to be a better person for this new chapter in my life.

Moving on does not mean I have totally forgotten about my late husband. It means simply accepting what can no longer be, thanking him for all the memories that has made me into this resilient woman I am today. And maybe every now and then whisper into the air "Hey, my babe is making me happy every moment of my life... or, He loves me and my daughter so much we could not ask for more.... Thank you for watching over us and for nudging me a bit into the path where he and I would cross ways..."

And no, this is not comparing my past to my present. There is no comparison. I was a different girl back then. I am a different woman now. Closure has been handed. My heart and my life belongs to the present and my future..together with the little girl we now call OURS and the man whose name my heart beats for today and always.


----destiny

 

Monday, April 2, 2012

2012 and 36 months after..unfinished open letter

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 12:47 AM

Dear bey,

It is now 2012. 36 months after you said goodbye to life on earth. And it's been so long since I last wrote that I no longer know if I can still do it. So expect few spelling and grammatical errors ,but then, the heart knows no rules when it comes to pouring out its emotions.

Did you know about the 2012 theory of the Mayans? John Cusack made a movie about it but you were already gone for 5 months when it was shown worldwide. The Mayans foretold that the world will end on December 21, 2012. I do not believe them. My world ended on June 24,2009 in that cold isolation room at the Neuro Intensive Care Unit of Rashid Hospital in Dubai.

Here are some of the events you would have taken interest in but missed since then. I miss seeing you read local Gulf news, Philippine news and CNN reports early in the morning and I miss hearing your opinions and other stuff that make my nose bleed because my brain could no longer take more information than what you were giving me.

2009

May 2009 - Kris Allen won A.I. But I guess I told you this when you were fully sedated on the ICU and when you woke up. We both wanted and bet Adam Lambert would win. We were wrong.

May 21 - Egyptian billionaire real-estate tycoon Hisham Talaat Mustafa sentenced to death for the murder of Lebanese pop singer Suzanne Tamim. (When you talked about Tamim's murder then, I was like "wtf! pati ba naman Lebanese artists kilala mo! But then again, she was killed in Dubai and you made it your business to be informed about everything that happens around you)

June 1 - Air France Airbus crashes into Atlantic off northeastern Brazil killing 228 people, no survivors. Search called off in August after 51 bodies found.( This I'm sure you would have taken deep interest in, considering your obsession with airplanes. I remember you printing pages and pages of stuff about airplanes. And when you tried to share it to me, I got nauseated because it was all too technical and I felt like you were either studing to be an aeronautic engineer or trying to discover how to prevent airplane crashes , or build a 'crash-proof' plane. You were that one person I know who's been travelling from country to country for 15yrs yet still had that feeling you were going to die everytime you boarded a plane. THAT ALONE MADE ME REALIZE YOU LOVED ME SO MUCH FOR YOU WEREWILLING TO TRAVEL ALL THE WAY FROM SAUDI ARABIA TO MANILA TO CAGAYAN DE ORO JUST TO PROPOSE AND MARRY ME!

June 24-25 - You died. Charlie's Angel Farraw Fawcet died. MIchael Jackson died the day after. I have to ask, did you meet them at St. Peter's gate? ( Just kidding, I do not believe in this, neither did you)

June 29 - Bernard Madoff, chief symbol of US financial greed, is sentenced to 150 years in prison for decades-long, 65- billion-dollar "Ponzi" rip off scheme. ( You understood about world market and stock exchange whew!)

July 31 - Cory Aquino died. You called her the worst president of the Philippines.

August 2009- Ondoy hits the Philippines, killing hundreds in Metro Manila, particularly Marikina. Tsunami in Samoa and earthquake in Indonesia kills thousands.

October 22- Microsoft launched WIndows 7, to replace the unpopular Windows Vista (which you hated! ) I wonder if you would have changed the OS of our laptop then to W7. Because even with XP then, I sometimes turn on your laptop to see that you changed it back to Windows2000 , which according to a Windows and frustrated/aborted Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer like you said was the best OS Microsoft made. And oh I'm sorry you never got your MCSE Certification because .....

October - Flu epidemic kills hundreds in Ukraine. Longest Olympic torch relay in history.

November - Dubai World, the state-owned real-estate and ports giant, asks for a six-month moratorium on its debt, shaking financial markets from Shanghai to New York. Maguindanao Massacre took place.

2010

January - Burj Khalifa officially opened. (If you were alive then, we would have been there when it happened, watching the fireworks). Haiti earthquake kills more than 200,000. Ethiopian Airline crash. (and again another one, which would have made you secretly obsessed about planes even more).

February - Chile earthquake kills more than 500. 8.8 magnitude, recorded as one of the largest in history.

April - Poland president dies in Airplane crash (Again!) Volcanic ash disrupt air traffic in Europe.

May - 2 separate airplane crashes, one in Libya, and one in India killing hundreds. KZ turned 4, you turned 42 and I turned 31

June - Noynoy Aquino elected president of the Philippines. And you would have said " Oh no, not another Aquino, so is Kris 1st lady now?"

July- Spain wins FIFA world cup. (Okay, I would have been the only one interested in this, but since you understood my love for football, you would also have been interested in this too). Thousands killed in Pakistan flood.

October - Tsunami and Repeated Volcanic eruptions hit Indonesia killing thousands.

2011

January

  • January 9–15 – Southern Sudan holds a referendum on independence. The Sudanese electorate votes in favour of independence, paving the way for the creation of the new state in July
  • January 11 – Flooding and mudslides in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro kills 903.
  • January 14 – Arab Spring: The Tunisian government falls after a month of increasingly violent protests; President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali flees to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power.
  • January 24 – 37 people are killed and more than 180 others wounded in a bombing atDomodedovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia.

( You have friends from Sudan and Tunisia and you understood their politics. You find brazilian women sexy and Russian women beautiful hehehehe)

February - Egyptian president Mubarak resigns. You knew much about Egypt's history, government , culture. Former FP CHieff of Staff Angelo Reyes commits suicide a week after being accused of corruption under the term of your 'idol' president GMA. (Yes you liked the fact that she was an economist, daughter of former Pres Macapagal and one hell of a smart and strong lady. But I also believed that given all the corruption issues surrounding her, you would have been one of the first to condemn her)

March 11- Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan kills thousands. When they issued a tsunami warning in the Philippines, I cried, not for fear or anything, but I honestly felt alone. I wanted to scream then how much I needed you in my

life.

MArch - Libyan war, civil unrest in Bahrain and other arab countries.

April - prince william gets married. I could imagine you consoling me with these lines. " Mas pogi ako kay Prince William, maswerte ka saken kaya wag mo na iyakan yan hehehehe"

May- Osama Bin LAden killed my American troops. You knew a lot about him too, which made me wonder sometimes kung close ba kayo? At naging kabarkada ba kayo sa Saudi? hehehe Kz also turned 5, me 32, and you 43.

August- Gaddafhi overthrown. You knew a lot about Libya too, about their politics and trade. NASA announces that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.Juno, the first solar-powered spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter, is launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

October - Unesco admitted Palestine as a member.

November - Mars Rover Curiosty launched from Kennedy Space Center. Your 'idol' GMA arrested while trying to "flee" the country

December- Sendong hits the city you called " Calamity free".

There are still more events that happened from 2009- 2011 which I know you would have taken serious interest with.

And I miss that intelligent guy who taught me a lot about world politics, science , showbiz. I miss the guy who taught me about google when I didnt know the answer to my query. You were a trivia/information freak. You absorbed and understood everything you read. And i loved you for that also. That made you so sexy to me. I miss answering crossword puzzles with you. I dont do them anymore. I ould still remember the look on your face when we came across a 4 letter puzzle about Israel's commercial airline and when I answered El Al, you were like "How come you know that and I don't ". And I answered " I read Erich Segal books and he's a jew".

No, you did not miss these events. The world has become a troubled place to live in. Even Mother Nature is driving me crazy with all these climate changes. Im a way I'm glad you've been spared from all these heartaches.

And yes, maybe the world is coming to an end soon. Whatever. All I know is my world ended with you.


 

Friday, January 14, 2011

it's almost 2 years after...

1 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 10:36 AM



Have you ever stuffed yourself so hard until you puked just so you wouldn't feel anything else but that overwhelming urge to vomit, hoping that you could just flush away all the pain along with all of it? How do you tell your heart to stop escaping and really start mourning and command your body to just scream it all out?
It's been a while since I posted here...and since I cried.I need to let it all out. Running away from pain is not the same as moving on.

When I'm lying in my bed and everything is quiet around me, the pain threatens to shake my "calm" exterior, words swirl inside my mind. I try to capture the angst-filled prose forming inside my head, knowing that Floren would have been happy to see me wrting again, although he would also feel my pain. But when I turn on my computer and start typing, my fingers freeze over the keyboard, scared to let go of even an iota of my emotions...desperately clinging on to everything about him, even the pain.

20 months. I tell myself Floren is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And with those 3 words, my sane world threatens to crumble again, making me hastily retreat into a life where I am trapped in this emotional mumbo jumbo.

he is gone, but accepting the truth does not lessen the pain of his absence, nor the intensity of my longing for him, nor my never ending need for him in my life. So what am I supposed to do? The only thing I know right now is surviving for my Kz...the lttle girl who is growing to be more and more like her daddy everyday...


(and oh, I long to be taken back to my real first love, HIM, my Jesus...I long for His comfort, the only thing that could heal me. Yet I stubbornly hold on to all these , for this is the only way I know of holding on to F...)

 

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Thursday, June 24, 2010

365 days

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 8:28 AM

its been a while since I posted something here.

my heart is still not in the mood for writing though...

today is Floren's first death anniversary. 365 days of widowhood, 365 days of pure agony without him...

 

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

home

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 12:31 AM

After 7 months, I'm finally back here in Dubai. I do not know yet what God's plans are for me, and why He brought me back here...all I know is that I need to trust only in Him, and in His perfect love for me.


When I left Manila last January for Malaysia, God has again showed that He is indeed faithful in spite of my failures and sins. And when I boarded the plane for Dubai on the 29th, I kept hearing this one song in mind... "Im coming home, to the place where I belong......"(Home by Chris Daughtry), and yes, this is HOME for me, the place that was witness to the love F and I so unconditionally shared.

I miss him, i still love him so much. But I have stopped expecting that the doorbell's going to ring and that he's coming home....

I miss my Kz so much too. I can't wait to be with her again, but not until I finish all unresolved issues here in the UAE. This time away from her has made me appreciate motherhood even more, and I know that when I return to that place Kz and I now call home, I will have become a better mother for her....


 

Thursday, January 14, 2010

0 comments Posted by destinynoelle at 12:22 AM

found this one on the internet :






for a moment, i felt these words were from my bey...telling me i can overcome my current situation, telling me to be smart and not to fall for meaningless words that has no heart.

 

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