Read by Comrade Julie de Lima during the last farewell ceremonies for Ka Joma in Utrecht, The Netherlands, December 27, 2022
First published in the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Newsletter, January-March, 2023, Volume 3, Issue 1: Special Edition in Honour of the ILPS Chairperson Emeritus Jose Maria Sison
I was with you in the last few hours of your life. It pained me seeing you suffer so I asked the attending doctor to ease your pain and give you morphine. I hoped it would help but I still could see you straining with pain as I watched the rise and fall of your chest. And I wished so hard that I could breathe for you. But my wish was not to be.
And so, you took your last breath. Now you are relieved of pain. And now the pain is with me and forever will be. It squeezes my heart every time I breathe. And it will always until I join you.
The projects we were supposed to finish keeps me going. I have all the help I can get from our comrades and friends. They give me comfort and company every day.
And you left so many notes for writing projects that we planned, including requested interviews you had no more time to answer. And so, these will never be written as I cannot do all these without you.
Love bound us on the day we got to know each other. It is love that binds us and to our four children and two grandchildren, to our comrades and friends and the people whom we have served all our lives.
I shall always love you. I shall always feel your presence with every breath I take, in the air that I breathe, in the sunlight that shines on me, in the water that I drink, on the ground on which I tread, and in all the things I do.
I love you as you loved me, your children and grandchildren, and the Filipino people that you served with determination to your very last breath and even beyond as the following notes you left on your writing pad in almost illegible handwriting.
NOTES
(for a poem)
It is unfair that an entire society
Is called capitalist and yet so few
Can call themselves capitalists
And look down on the rest of the people.
It is outrageous
That the capitalists boasts
Of being the real creators
Of the wealth created by labor.
It is simply unjust and revolting
That the capitalists dishonor dead labor
To usurp power and wealth
And dominate and exploit living labor.
It is best to fight for a society
Where everyone can call oneself
Like others as socialists
And live with honor in equality.
I have spoken in behalf of all our children. We all are devastated by your passing and they wish to bear their grief in privacy, thus, they are not here with me today.
As my tribute to my dear husband and father of our children, I adopt the resolution of the Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Philippines, “Great communist thinker, leader, teacher and guide of the Filipino proletariat and torch bearer of the international communist movement” on November 7, 2016.
As we grieve his passing, let us turn our grief into revolutionary courage and resolve with ever greater determination to continue the struggle for national democracy until the Filipino people win their victory and proceed to socialist construction and revolution.
Let Ka Joma live in the victory of the struggle.
January 12, 2023