when my friend danny let me read her manuscript for her final requirement, i was left estranged. i always felt alienated in the notion of family as i’ve always felt a distance towards them.
in her introduction to visiting hours, she interrogates this notion:
Our proximity to people allows and at times, hinders us to fully empathize with loss. For me to be able to reach out to others, I was determined to understand what loss means in a closer circle. Because our family, too, have lost the people we love, and perhaps the best we can do would be to remember and rest together, for now.
i was afraid of the g word for a while. because i’ve seen what it does to the people around me. how it mostly leads them to intense bouts of sadness, something i was taught to repress. i remember the series of funerals i attended a couple of years ago on my father’s side. holding back the tears as they were buried to the ground, i held on to my little cousin, he too was doing the same, like the adults did. we were all together, but nobody seemed to be reaching out.
maybe this is why i felt much more loss when my grandparents died on my mother’s side. to see this loss happening at a communal level, even if it was just through a recurring Zoom meeting for a week. it was something else to see my relatives having to face each other through their low-quality webcams.
in condolences from afar, the first version concludes:
I’m sending you my embrace –
Through the codes of the internet
and the DNA of my language.
though DNA suggests our genetic composition, it seemed albeit mechanical and disconnected, considering the context of the poem of grieving from a distance. our connection seems to transcend more than just mere biological frameworks.
with the revision, it instead confirms our limitations for consolation:
I’m sending you my embrace –
Through the codes of the internet
and the fragments of my language.
but these limitations do not hinder us from translating love towards one another:
Hold and cast it in your arms
until we meet again.
in genesis, she embodies the loss of her loved ones:
I am pieced and weaved together
through the loss of a body.
i never got to know who my grandmother was, only through the stories others have told me, since she was no longer physically and mentally capable to communicate these things to me herself. I only have now are her genetic makeup passed on to me by my mother, from her own mother who has passed away. this absence she left was something i didn’t expect to be given.
i remember how my relatives told me, if the pandemic wasn’t here, maybe lolo and lola would’ve been buried in where they belong, their provincial ground where they were born and raised in.
in exquisite corpse, she plants the remains of her uncle:
As you share the same soil,
the ground becomesyou, fragments
of the earth.
its a tragic how the pandemic has shaped the ways we deal with death. the ground burial has always been more tactile for us to get closer to those who have passed. the act of watching them be lowered, particularly if alongside our relatives who have already passed, was a way to feel that they are still on this earth. living among us, like the grass and soil that houses them.
danny brings her family into her work as well, with her father being tasked to read this piece, stating that it was her uncle’s wish to be buried and not burned.
the first time i read this collection, it only contained the texts. danny informed me that this work was intended to become a photographic essay, but she never really relayed what those photographs would look like. seeing it then pieced together into the webpage, it led me to see this work in a patchwork of mementos:
in loss is a childhood friend
At first glance, I already knew that I was going to share my youth with him because I had no choice. It was like having a neighbor that would knock on your door even when you are not in the mood to play, but you have no other option but to spend time with him because your parents have already let him in. When he comes in, he runs straight to my room without taking his shoes off and lays down on my bed with dirty clothes on. He leaves one of his belongings so it could come by the next day.
in to sister: a stranger, a friend
If I could list down the times they’ve called this room yours, then maybe you can consider visiting me in my dreams so I could ask for your permission. The room you’ve left behind has always made me feel like a guest and the least I could do is to leave some space for you.
in mixed tapes:
“It’s him.” He kept the walkie-talkie closer to his ear, and he would mimic the noise a few times. A long whistle. Dad laughed at his assumption.
“How?”
“He’s whistling.”
He turned the gadget off and dropped it on the table. “He wants to say that he’s here.”
in our chat discussion as i was going through the introduction of the collection, danny tells me that she’s afraid of forgetting, writing was her way of preserving. it also nice seeing that these photographs were a mixture of mediums and sources, some were taken through analog means of film. others were taken digitally, some were taken from her mother’s archive. essentially making a photo album for their ongoing remembering.
in i remember because, she concludes:
I think that forgetting could be a blessing.
recollection can be both a comforting or agonizing. I mostly write to create distance towards certain events or subjects, it has to leave me in some way it could. but seeing something as intimate as these pieces be laid out together felt like a confrontation. that i too had to start tending to these losses in order to be able to live through them.
in storeyed stories, danny assembles:
I plan to take them to an empty lot where I will arrange everything together. I have gotten used to building fortresses from scattered items and settling on borrowed spaces. Like a potter, I would cast my clay with ashes and would offer my rudiments to create storeys of things I have gathered. I would lay the pieces down to create a blueprint. With my hands, I would build the scaffolding.
when i received the physical copy of this work, it came with a postcard. its as if danny was suggesting us to reach out to each other, especially in these troubled times. revisiting these pieces earlier this year leads me to do the same.
danny also leaves a space for everyone
But I’ve talked so much about my experiences with grief and loss. And maybe I’m ready to listen outside. We can all quest forward, together.
and i’m thankful that she has let me in.
you can visit danny castillo’s visiting hours here: visting hours
thanks for the link, clark!