‘It’s the mother in me, the pain in my heart, I’m sorry’

Entirely new experience

The whole experience of attending to Mary Jane’s needs when word of her pending execution came was so new it was fraught with both bad and unintended light moments, the family said.

Cesar Veloso recalled how, on one of their trips to Indonesia, his wife set off the airport scanner during a routine security check.

“I was so nervous! I thought someone might have slipped shabu into her pockets!” Cesar Veloso said. “But when the (security crew) checked, it turned out to be her dentures,” he added, laughing.

“The (security personnel) asked her to please wear the dentures. Then it was OK,” he added in Filipino.

Going through hell

But such moments of laughter are now a seeming luxury for Celia Veloso and the family who, as she described it, had been through hell.

“In the five years that Mary Jane has been in jail, our family has also been in jail,” she said. “It’s true, we’ve always been poor. But before all these, we could eat rice with tomato and patis and go to sleep content. Since she was imprisoned, we’ve never had a good night’s sleep.”

It was worse on Indonesia’s prison island, Veloso said. “Never in my life did I imagine seeing my daughter on that island,” she said, adding that Mary Jane was the only woman among the nine death convicts on April 29, when the execution was imminent.

Crossing the island meant being almost stripped, Veloso said. “You have to leave everything you have behind—food, kids’ toys, even water. That’s what we experienced because of government neglect.”

And it’s not over yet. Mary Jane remains on death row, her fate resting on the findings of an investigation into her alleged recruiter, Maria Kristina Sergio, and her live-in partner, Julius Lacanilao, both of whom face human trafficking and illegal recruitment charges. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Friday that the two had confessed working for an international drug ring, although their lawyer denied it.

According to Mary Jane, Sergio had promised her a job overseas and gifted her with a luggage secretly packed with 2.6 kilos of heroin. The contraband was discovered in Yogyakarta in April 2010, and landed the 30-year-old single mother on death row.

While Mary Jane’s family is counting on judicial proceedings in the Philippines to keep her alive, her two boys face a future without a mother. Mark Daniel is now 12, and Mark Darren, 6.

Brave front

“Her children are growing up without the guidance of a mother,” their grandmother said. “The eldest boy is doing poorly in school. When Mary Jane was here, he did good, he was really smart,” she added.

In the midst of the family’s continuing nightmare, Veloso saw she was drawing strength from Mary Jane herself who put up a brave front even in the face of death, and took care of her wake and funeral arrangements, “from the clothes she’d wear, her choice of funeral song (“The Jubilee Song” by Jamie Rivera) … she took care of everything,” Veloso added.

Mary Jane’s elder sister, Maritess, attributed such attitude to the way they were raised.

“When we were kids, we would take turns leading prayers every night,” Maritess said. “We would hold hands and pray together,” she added.

While the family remains prayerful, the Velosos are also banking on government that, they hope, would firmly be in the family’s corner this time.

“I hope the government acts now, and that they won’t neglect my daughter’s case [lest] she stay in prison for years even if she’s innocent,” Celia Veloso said.

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