Racquel Dizon-Ikei remembers the stories as they were yesterday.
The main character, his father, Joe LaVille, was narrator and tireless suitor, a widower from Guam who discovered a correspondent in the 1950s and who gave his acts of romance to his captive audience, the many un nameless gifts he sent to his friend in Candon. , to the city of the province of Ilocos Sur in the Philippines. Her name is Maria Ursula Guirnalda, a primitive and decent woman, widow and the fifth eldest among 14 brothers.
Many un nameless gifts later, LaVille reaches the climax of his favorite tale:
“One day he showed up in his hometown, came into his space with more gifts and called. When he comes to the door, he announces, “It’s me. Here I am, ” said Dizon-Ikei. “He told us this story when we were kids. “
After several years of courtship, Joseph LaVille married Maria Garlandda in 1963 in the Philippines. LaVille, a forklift operator who worked on board and was traveling with U. S. ships docked in the Philippines, was in Guam on August 1, 1950, the day President Harry Truman made LaVille and other U. S. citizens when he signed the Guam Organic Law.
LaVille, with two children from his first marriage, still brought his new wife and two children to Guam. Together they had five other children, welcomed others and raised them in Maina. Dizon-Ikei, orphan at 2, is the youngest of the brothers.
Ms. LaVille was a lifelong educator, a patient kindergarten instructor who spoke like a subtle woman, regardless of her surroundings. LaVille continued its public service activities before locating a career for the time being at the Guam Energy Office.
They spent the next half of the century almost inseparable, and Joe LaVille continued to love his wife until they turned 90. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit Guam.
Maria LaVille, 92, went to the hospital one day with a fever and then tested positive for COVID-19. She was inexplicably quarantined at her home, Dizon-Ikei said, where she probably passed on the fatal virus to her husband. He hospitalized Joe LaVille and a few days later, GMH staff said they had done everything they could for him, but it lasted a little longer. His wife Maria LaVille had a fever again and she returned to GMH and placed her on another floor.
Dizon-Ikei, who lives in Arizona with her husband and five children, is already making desperate plans to return home to Guam. His circle of relatives asked GMH if the couple could simply be together, and GMH agreed to that request.
“They approached their beds in combination and told us that at one point they took their hand,” Dizon-Ikei said.
Dizon-Ikei arrived in Guam on August 30 and was quarantined at Dusit Beach Resort for two weeks, despite a stack of documents and check effects that gave him hope that quarantine would be much shorter. His request to isolate himself at home was denied.
On 9/11, two days before his release, his father died; Along with him, his wife Maria, his other interlocutor and life wife for six decades, Dizon-Ikei has been quarantined, but is glad that his father did not die alone.
Maria LaVille stayed in her husband’s hospital room and left a week later to be with him. On September 18, he gave his last breath with a GMH nurse by his side.
It’s been a week since Dizon-Ikei lost her mom and she had a little time to cry. There’s a lot to do and she’s had to deal with a lot of things on her own. Her husband and children, who arrived in Guam on September 16. , were quarantined. Some of her brothers arrived Tuesday night and she was able to see them at the airport before they boarded a bus to the government’s quarantine facility.
However, there are flashes of happiness. He continues to receive messages and calls from others he has heard of but never knew; the other people his parents had helped at some point in their long lives.
“My father was an undeniable man, very humble, never flashy. He enjoyed politics and co-founded club Bicol de Guam. My mother taught for so long and did not retired until she began to see her adult ex-scholars with her companions. own children, ” said Dizon-Ikei. ” My father and mother helped a lot of people; were the springboard for the circle of relatives now living in the United States. They sent money, supplies, everything they had. People are very grateful.
“I knew the other people they were helping. had simply not learned the intensity of his gratitude until now. Or they were very affectionate and generous,” he said.
As he struggles to organize his funeral, memories go back as flash floods. She recalls how she and her siblings helped rebuild their home after Pamela Supertyphoon in 1976. Su task was to straighten her nails so they could be reused. How much his father liked to drive and hang out, and how to go out to dinner was a pleasure because he hadn’t grown up developing. She remembers her strict upbringing, her mother’s emphasis on school, and her mother’s mandate that no one deserves to get married before she prints the same thing to her children, she says, and other younger people will one day perceive why.
She also remains close to her brothers and sisters now that she grew up in Maina. At the time of his farewell, Dizon-Ikei said that everyone who would live would be in Guam, because a brother trapped in a closed town in the Philippines.
He still can’t wish to be there when his father and mother are dead, but he’s consoled the hested thinking they’re accumulating in paradise, because that’s where other intelligent people go.
“We are unwavering to other people and we knew their time would come, but not with COVID and not quarantined,” Dizon-Ikei said. in combination for so long, appearing to all his love and generosity. We are the product of this love and generosity. They were other intelligent people and I love them with all my heart.