This was not the most sudden turn of events. I have already had time to prepare myself for this day. My lola had been bedridden and battling Alzheimer’s disease for three years. Still, the contrast of life and loss, of abundance and end, will no doubt turn one’s joy into sadness.Mona Lisa’s was a long and mighty one, and it had come to a close.
Back in Manila, she survived malnutrition throughout World War II as a struggling single mother—surviving with no less than having to give birth to her second child at its tail end, after running through the streets of the city cut off from electricity as she went into labor right in the middle of the American invasion.
And in the middle of the fanfare of her passing, I had found myself again in this recurring contrast of realities, caught between the tragedy and beauty that was her life and the meanness and kindness of her fate.All I can see now is her life.
Her first son Edward Gardner was fathered by then director Marvin Gardner , who was the one who eventually changed her screen name to Mona Lisa when she changed studios and signed on with X-Otic Films at the onset of the 1940s. Back in the day, actors would work under one “mother studio” that provided them movies to film throughout the year.
Battling epileptic attacks caused by a postoperation mishap on her thyroid, my grandmother decided to retire at 30 after marrying my grandfather to focus on being a fulltime wife and mother. I would often be asked as a child what she was like in person. It amused me how she was nothing like how I saw her every day on television after school. After all, she took care of me most days. She cooked, cleaned, told me bedtime stories that didn’t star her as the villain.
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