Dec. 2, 2007, began like any ordinary day in the Carlos and De Larrazabal households. Mikey de Larrazabal and Joey Carlos, both 18, had once been batch mates as 10-year-old boys at the Ateneo de Manila. But their paths had diverged.
In 2007, Joey was a freshman college student at Ateneo while Mikey was studying at the University of Asia and the Pacific. Their parents, Pepe and Raciel Carlos and Albert and Jo Ann de Larrazabal, had never met.
In that early December morning, trying to avoid a motorcycle that had cut his path, Mikey slammed his car against a post on C-5 Road and was killed.
Joey, on the other hand, was on his way down from Baguio in an SUV driven by the father of one of the five other boys in the vehicle. To this day, details remain sketchy on the cause of the accident. Some of the boys were injured but Joey’s injuries were the severest. He was the only one who did not survive.
Nothing prepares one for the shock of the death of one’s child. The shock becomes magnified where the death is sudden.
Dr. Catherine Sanders, who wrote the classic book “How To Survive The Loss of a Child,” is a bereaved parent. She lost her teenage son, Jim, in a boating accident in the 1970s. A practicing psychologist, she devoted the rest of her professional life after his son’s death to studying parental bereavement. She has helped thousands of families heal.
“My initial purpose was to find out what caused the awful pain, the physical, gut-wrenching pain,” Sanders writes. ‘’I eventually learned that the pain cannot be circumvented. It must be borne with full vengeance and awareness. What can help, however, is to understand as much as possible about grief even before it happens.”
In the book “Recovery from Bereavement” by Parkes and Weiss, unexpected loss syndrome is described as difficulty in believing that the loss has really occurred and an inability to face the loss, as well as social withdrawal from others who could provide comfort.
Sanders believes these reactions are all part of the shock that often follows the sudden loss of a child.
“Shock goes on for months, partially cloaking the bereaved in an insulated sheath that protects them from experiencing the reality of the death too starkly. There is a tendency to remain closely attached to the deceased long past the time that others think they should be,” Sanders says.
For the majority, shock often wears out in the first few weeks or months after a loss. This is not true for cases of sudden or traumatic death because the circumstances that surround the loss of the child often take a longer time to comprehend. The phase can even last to the second year after the child’s death. Patience and understanding of the bereaved parent and all who support them are required.
Raciel’s Joey
Joey was brought to a hospital in Pangasinan after the accident, underwent surgery and put on life support. By the time the Carlos couple reached the hospital that afternoon, he had been declared brain dead. The couple stayed with their eldest son for the next 24 hours. He never woke up and died the following day.
“For quite a while, I was confused whether his death anniversary was Dec. 2 or 3. It’s so hard to see your son in that state. I feel cold and clammy while I am talking to you, like there is still an electric shock running through my body,” Raciel says, speaking in English and Filipino.
“Sometimes I remember things and then forget them, I get confused sometimes by some of the events … During the wake, there were Atenean parents who said there were two Ateneans who died at the same time. It turns out they meant Mikey de Larrazabal.”
The thought of suing never entered the minds of the Carloses. Asked after Joey had died if they wanted an autopsy of his body in case they would sue, Raciel said she believed it was not something Joey would have wanted because he was very close to the families involved. She still believes she had made a prudent decision.
Raciel says that to this day, she finds difficulty remembering the exact details of Joey’s accident, or perhaps, she says, she chose not to know.
Recalling the wake in 2008 for Amiel Alcantara, the 3rd grader who met with an accident in an Ateneo parking lot, she says she was amazed at how Amiel’s mother could narrate exactly what happened. “I sort of felt envious that she could do that…” says Raciel.
Moving on, slowly
She now reflects that perhaps she had put her grief on hold because it was a busy period and there were many people around. However, around mid- January 2008, after what would have been Joey’s 19th birthday, she began to experience tremors and could not sleep well.
Raciel says she also found it difficult to get back to her exercise routine. She also did not want to do the same things she used to before Joey’s death.
To treat the tremors and sleeplessness, she saw a psychiatrist. After eight months of sessions, her memories and her strength slowly came back.
“I started to realize that this couldn’t go on and I had to start helping myself, too. I could also see that my other children were suffering because of me.”
Run for Joey
Raciel still grapples with the meaning of Joey’s death.
“What’s the meaning of that? Well, maybe [it’s in] the Joey Carlos scholarship program that we put up for a deserving high school student at Ateneo, ideally from a public school in Marikina, where we are from. We support one student through four years of high school.”
Raciel’s passion for running and her search for meaning eventually dovetailed. She did her first successful 42K marathon, which she dedicated to Joey. The run raised additional funds for the scholarship program. Raciel called the event “Run for Joey.”
“I’m just taking it one day at a time. If it’s a good day, I smile, I laugh … If it’s a bad day, I pray for strength, letting the tears wash away the pain. I look forward to tomorrow with the hope that it will be a good day once more.”
Jo Ann’s Mikey
On hearing of her son’s accident, Jo Ann de Larrazabal knew Mikey was gone but she was firm in her resolve to drive, get out to C-5 and follow her husband to the hospital so she could be with both him and Mikey.
“I was psyching myself. I was driving and I was alone. So I told myself—‘My son is dead but I have to get to the hospital, to be with Albert, to be with my son.’ So I said, ‘Drive carefully now…’”
The death of a child defies the normal order of things. To release your child and give him back to his Maker is the ultimate sacrifice. For the De Larrazabals, the act of surrender seemed to have come naturally.
“We went to his body, we held him, we prayed over him,” Jo Ann recalls. “We thanked him for being such a wonderful son. We told him there were no issues that needed to be fixed, that everything was great with us. And we thanked God for making us his parents, for choosing us to raise him and then we said, ‘Go darling, just go with your Maker, go with Him.’”
Albert, for his part, told her: “I’m glad I was there when he was born and that I was there when he died. I was there in the beginning and at the end.”
One thing Albert made clear to Jo Ann as they stood in front Mikey’s body: “There is no one to blame. I want that to be very clear, that there shall be no blaming.” She says this set the tone for their journey of grief.
Says Jo Ann: “Blaming is a very painful and ugly thing to go through and sometimes prevents you from moving on … I went through hell. But setting the tone very early on, making those right decisions—giving back our son to the Lord, deciding that we will not blame anybody or anything for the accident was a good start for us.”
Gift of a dream
For a long time, Jo Ann was fixated on the events that transpired the night before Mikey’s accident and on her regret at not being able to hug him, as she was wont to do, because she had slept early that night.
“My regret is that I was not able to say goodbye to him … I kept berating myself—why didn’t I get to hug him?”
This was assuaged somewhat a year and three months after he died when he came to her in a dream.
“In the dream, he came closer and hugged me really tight. And I started sobbing hard and for a long time it was like that until I could not breathe anymore. I woke up … I felt, oh wow, he gave me the chance to hug him and he did that too for his dad and his sisters.”
Having no guilt or regrets helped, Jo Ann says. She says she has learned to love in complete surrender.
“You make a decision to look at things through the eyes of grace … So total surrender—‘You take care of me God because I don’t know what to do.’ I know that God did not make this happen. ‘Just work with my life and bahala ka (you’re in charge)’ … You just have to trust even if you are in the depths,” she says.
Jo Ann has started to open herself up to new experiences and begun doing Bikram yoga, using her time to commune with Mikey.
“You never really lose your child because the beating of your heart is in sync with your child’s heart so I’ve been using that time just to be with him. And I’m a lot calmer, more peaceful.”
Through it all, Albert has been a source of strength for her.
“I embrace my pain. I embrace the joy and grace that I receive, that’s all we can do,” she says. “Just embrace whatever you are given and you will get through it. Love is the most essential part of life … Love brought Mikey to our lives, the love we had for him made him grow up to be a fine young man. Our love, respect for one another’s sorrow and open communication with each other kept us together in spite of our tragedy. That’s all it is.”
“Between Loss & Forever : Filipina Mothers on the Grief Journey” is published by Anvil and available at National Book Store and Powerbooks. Visit the book’s blog at https://betweenlossandforever.blogspot.com/ or check its Facebook page—Between Loss and Forever (BLF)