Lost Them..... For Now

I don't know how many people find themselves in a similar predicament but what has long been a source of personal frustration for me is the fact that I do not know enough of my family's history and heritage. And by this, I'm not just referring to one side of the family. I'm referring to BOTH my father and mother's respective sides of the family. I find it quite pathetic not because I didn't care enough to find out but it is mainly due to the very limited information available from close relatives.

Let me start with my mother's side of the family. My mother does not know where both my grandfather's parents are buried. My maternal grandfather, an only child, was born in 1897 and died in 1983. Both his parents had passed away by the time he was in his early 20s in 1920.

Being the seventh of eight children and having been born in the latter part of the 1930s, I can understand and even forgive my mother for this lapse. However, the situation becomes quite absurd when one learns that none of her older siblings also know where their grandparents are exactly buried. All I was told years ago was that the poor, almost forgotten couple were buried in a cemetery somewhere in Malolos, Bulacan.

However, when I asked my mom the very same question just this past week, she said that there isn't even a degree of certainty that my maternal greatgrandparents' remains even lie in a Malolos cemetery. All she now knows is that they were buried somewhere in Bulacan. Oh great. Just effing great. Now, all of Bulacan's cemeteries just became search candidates. If I had to start my search at this very moment, I would have to first come up with a master list of all Bulacan cemeteries that have been around for at least a hundred years and are still used today. God knows how many such cemeteries are out there. And worse, there's also the possibility that the cemetery those poor folks were buried in nine decades ago may no longer be a cemetery today. For all I know, on the cemetery's old site could now stand any of the following: a children's playground, a subdivision, a tiangge (flea market) or worse, perhaps a row of uber-trendy restaurants. I certainly hope that that's not the case.

At least I know my greatgrandfather's full name if in case I have to search through some birth and death records. Researching about my greatgrandmother would be more of a challenge. Although I know her first name, neither my mom nor any of her siblings know what her maiden name was. I guess I could attempt to find a marriage license somewhere that has both my greatgrandfather's full name and my greatgrandmother's first name on it.

On my father's side of the family, things are only slightly better. In contrast to my mother's side, both my greatgrandparents' names, their birth and death dates are well documented since they're both buried in the family plot at Manila's North Cemetery. However, even though I was told that my greatgrandfather was part of a rather large brood, I do not have any information as to the names of any of his siblings. Neither does my father nor any his surviving siblings.

I also know next to nothing about my dear greatgrandmother. I do not have any information as to who her parents and her siblings (if any) were, and where exactly in Manila she grew up. At least I know her maiden name and that would be a start. She was quite entrepreneurial according to my father. She was the brains behind a successful family business that operated in both Manila and Makati City back in the 1930s. She passed away from old age when I was four years old.

As for my greatgrandfather's heritage, I have mixed information. Looking at old family photographs from the early 1930s, my greatgrandfather had very strong Chinese features. From the photographs I saw, he possessed a rather fair complexion and Chinese eyes. I was also told that my greatgrandfather's father had worked as a cook somewhere in Binondo during the 19th Century. My father and relatives say that we are of mixed Chinese and Filipino heritage. That's probably right because it's quite common in the Philippines.

But again, nobody knows where my great greatgrandfather lies buried. I don't even know the name of his wife, my great greatgrandmother. No one in the family knows what her name was. I have no real information on any of my greatgrandfather's siblings either. My father has second cousins but I didn't find out who and how many they were until I visited Manila last year. What makes matters worse was that in all the many years I lived and grew in my hometown, I never knew (and my father never bothered to tell his children) that those folks had been living in a neighboring district all that time!

As for the origins of our family name, the answer I got was that the name was/is quite common in Batangas. In particular, our ancestors were supposed to have migrated to Manila from Batangas, Batangas. How nice and yet how generic. But here again, growing up, none of my cousins and I were ever introduced to any Batangueno relative. None of us were even taken to Batangas on a single sentimental trip to see an ancestral home. The only memories I have of Batangas were of family excursions to beach resorts in the summer. But no memories at all of any single trip that was taken for the sole purpose of meeting up with a Batangas-based relative.

Seriously, I have my doubts about our family's Batangueno roots. And the reason I say this is based on our family's collective command of the Tagalog dialect. Whenever we speak to each other, we hardly use deep or profound Tagalog words. Our vocabulary is pretty much limited to common or everyday Tagalog words. The deeper Tagalog words we learned along the way often came from school and from people who married into the family.

If still possible, I also want to find out what our original Chinese name was. This is due to the fact that our Chinese features are so strong that people often mistake quite a number of my cousins and I for Chinese rather than Filipino. When I was in Hongkong earlier this year, a lot of locals came up to me and spoke to me in Chinese. It may be close to impossible at this point but I still hope to set the record straight someday.

Given all this family history mess, I definitely have my work cut out for me. I plan to spend a good deal of time in Manila someday to work on sorting these things out. I hope I will still be healthy enough if and when that time comes. I want to know more about my family's past. I'm not very happy with the very limited information I have right now. I feel bad for my long deceased relatives whose names are almost lost to history. I feel bad that as a family, we haven't done a very good job of remembering the people who came before us.

I believe we owe it to our ancestors to keep memories of them alive. I also believe that we owe it to future generations of our family that they get a sense of where they came from and who they are. I fervently hope that records still exist in some government or municipal office somewhere that would provide me with leads or clues as to who they were, where they lived, and aside from us, who their other descendants are.

I'm still not certain as to what I'll do when the day comes and I finally have all the information I've long sought for in front of me. All I can say right now is I'll cross that bridge when I get there.