NAGA CITY — On the third year she observed All Saints and All Souls days after the death of her husband Jesse Robredo, Camarines Sur Third District Rep. Leni Robredo continues to hold on to his memories.
“When Jesse died, my feeling was to look forward to his first year death anniversary. At that time, it seemed that I had a wrong notion that after one year it would be okay. That after one year you would be able to get over with the loss and move on,” Robredo said.
For a year, from Aug. 19, 2012, the day it was confirmed that the then interior secretary have died in a plane crash off Masbate while enroute to Naga City from an official engagement in Cebu, to Aug. 19, 2013, she grieved by wearing only black clothes, which, she said, was her way of holding on to her connection with Jesse.
“But I see it as symbolic only because until now I cannot bear moving his personal things from where they’ve been since the last time he was alive,” said Robredo in an interview in her home in this city on Saturday.
Despite her hectic schedule as a vice presidential candidate of the ruling Liberal Party (LP), Robredo and her three daughters—Aika, 28, Tricia, 21, and Jillian, 15—came home to Naga City to spend All Saints Day and All Souls Day here, where Jesse’s cremated remains have been entombed at the Eternal Gardens Memorial Park.
Robredo said the last garments that Jesse used before he left for Cebu—a pair of denims, a pair of short pants, and one T-shirt that he used while running the treadmill—still hang at the back of the bedroom door of their rented condominium unit in Quezon City.
“I just brushed off the dusts. The night before he left for Cebu, he left a Coke in can in our room. It is still there. He has other clothes somewhere inside our room but I don’t disturb them,” Robredo said.
But she has given away all the new clothes that he had not used, mostly gifts. “All the clothing he had used I left them to where they were lying when he left our condominium the last time.”
“Until now I am not ready to let him go. Maybe there will be a time that I will let go of the connection to him,” Robredo said.
She attempted several times to clean the closets and store Jesse’s belongings but she could not do it, she revealed.
“So what we did, because we have small cabinets in our condominium, we keep our clothes in suitcases. What I do is just take out from the suitcase the clothes I wear for the week,” Robredo said.
She has talked with a number of widows and learned that several of them got over the loss faster than expected. But Robredo said she still could not get over the loss of her husband.
“It is a feeling of clinging on to his memories embedded on the things that belonged to him. That’s why I don’t disturb the belongings he left behind. It’s like if I disturb them, I am letting him go,” Robredo said.
She recalled that when Jesse was still alive, All Souls Day was more of a reunion of family and friends. They would go to cemeteries around Naga City visiting and bringing with them candles for their friends’ departed.
“It was celebratory, in the sense you are meeting all your friends. But after he died I cannot go around even visiting my relatives’ departed. On Nov. 1, I devote all my time to him,” Robredo said.
And this time, she said, it is their friends who are now visiting her and her children in her husband’s grave.
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