Never will she call her baby Yolanda
Sally Ann Lopez expects to deliver her sixth child any time now, but no way will she name her baby “Yolanda.”
“Yolanda caused so much destruction to us. It’s better to forget her,” she said.
Lopez, 30, lost two of her five children and their house to the supertyphoon when it devastated Leyte and other provinces in the Visayas on Nov. 8.
She and what is left of her family now stay in an evacuation center in Tacloban City.
It would be too cruel to name her coming child Yolanda—if it’s a girl—after what the typhoon did to them, she said.
Lopez is too weary now to think of a name, but definitely it won’t be after that of a killer typhoon.
Considered one of the strongest typhoons to hit the world, Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) killed more than 6,000 people in the Visayas, triggering massive assistance from the international community.
Lopez said she could call her baby Shyremell—if it’s a girl—after her name and that of her husband Rafael.
If it’s a boy, that would be a problem.
But then again, picking a name for the child may not even be all that important.
Send baby to US
Lopez has made a difficult decision: she would let her still unborn baby be adopted by a maternal aunt now living in the United States.
Lopez, her husband and their three remaining children have taken shelter at the nearby San Fernando Elementary School. They stay there with 271 other families, or 1,105 individuals, all from the Barangay 54-A in the city’s Magallanes District, one of the coastal villages.
Although in her full pregnancy, Lopez managed to get out of their house when giant waves spawned by Yolanda swamped her neighborhood.
She swam with her youngest child, year-old Shaquel, in her arms.
Others drowned
“At that time, I forgot that I was carrying a baby, that I was pregnant. All I thought of was to survive with my youngest child,” she said.
Two of her other children—Rafael III, 4, and Sarah Fyle, 2—were with her parents-in-law, who were also swimming to escape from the rampaging water that was over 10 feet high.
Aaron, 9, and May Joy, 8—Lopez’s two older children—were with her mother Alicia in a separate house in the same village. She did not know what happened to them until later—they had drowned.
Four of Lopez’s siblings, four nephews and an uncle also died in the storm surge.
No reason to celebrate
By January, the displaced families occupying the elementary school, one of more than 20 evacuation centers in the city, will have to leave for the resumption of classes.
Asked how she and her family would spend Christmas and how she was preparing for the birth of her new child, Lopez gave a chilling response.
“There is no Christmas to celebrate. What is there to celebrate? We have nothing,” she said.
“Besides, my baby will not be mine forever as I have decided to give my baby to my aunt,” she added without hesitation. “She has no future with me with our condition at present.”
‘Always my baby’
Lopez said getting her baby adopted by her aunt would assure the child of a good future. Her aunt, who lives in Florida and runs a home for the aged, is arriving next month to get the baby.
If the thought saddened her, she did not show it.
“It’s my decision. I have been talking with my baby and telling her that I love her but I have to give her to my aunt for her own sake. I will not forget her as she will always be my baby, my child,” Lopez said.
“I have to be practical. What’s the use of having my baby with me if she will have no future with us here. Anyway, my aunt promised me that she would tell my baby that I am her real mother.”
She said she and her 31-year-old husband had no jobs and depended merely on help from her relatives and neighbors, even before Yolanda destroyed the house her family shared with her parents-in-law.
Asked what future awaited them, Lopez stared blankly and said: “I have no idea.”
“We cannot stay in this school compound forever. I know that in the next few days, we will be asked by our government to move out. I don’t know what will happen to us,” she said.
“I survived together with my kids. At the same time, I lost my two other children,” Lopez sighed.
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