Sunflower

Kathleen “Dayday” Joseph David was a former student of mine at the Assumption Convent and a classmate of my sister Valerie since grade school. She was a good and pleasant student, the type who would make a teacher’s life a breeze. So she wasn’t just a name I would hear from my sister while she was growing up, or a name in my friend Marlu Villanueva Balmaceda’s Facebook page. She was a walking miracle because she seemed to have licked breast cancer (which she first discovered nine years ago), and because she led such a meaningful life, based on the accounts of Marlu and Valerie.

Dayday was the youngest of seven children of Mike and Grace Joseph. She was married to Choloy (Carlos Antonio) David and they have two small boys, Matteo and Pio. Dayday belonged to Assumption (San Lorenzo) Batch ‘86 and she was looking forward to her silver velada this year. I know her class had been excitedly preparing for this velada. Dayday also went to UP like Marlu and me. She took up Social Work then did her MBA at the AIM. She was with SGV for 12 years.

I have always associated Easter Sunday with the glorious sun, and in fact cannot remember an Easter Sunday that was gloomy and downcast. Fittingly, Marlu has entitled her farewell piece to Dayday, “Sunflower.”

Though there will be Good Fridays in our lives when our souls and our faith will wilt, we will always have an Easter; we will blossom again, every petal arching itself to kiss the glorious sun.

Here is Marlu’s piece on Dayday:

Whatever was left of her ravaged body was inside a cardboard box covered with a plain white sheet, strewn with Black-eyed Susans and cream rose petals. On the floor were sunflowers standing tall at full attention like honor guards before their queen. And indeed, she was the queen of sunflowers because she was like sunshine to so many. My friend Dayday had the most scintillating of smiles and her radiance emanated from a soul so gentle.

Her full name was Kathleen Claire Powell Joseph David and I had known her since she joined our company in 1999 but there was never an opportunity for us to work together back then. Yet we had this instant connection since we were alumnae of the same high school (Assumption) and university (UP Diliman), albeit I was eight years her senior. When she first encountered breast cancer nine years ago, I relayed to her my own experience with mastitis that required surgery twice. We called it a bovine disease because it was an infection of the milk glands, a sickness also found in cows’ udders. That became the first of so many jokes between us — that our afflictions were cow-like, prompting us to “moo” when we’d meet along corridors or in the elevator. Her last Christmas gift to me was a handbag in faux cowhide with brown spots — the joke had been running for nearly a decade!

Marlu Villanueva Balmaceda with Dayday David.

Then in 2007 we were sent to Kuala Lumpur for training and ended up roommates. That sealed the friendship and my life (and I would like to presume hers, too) was never the same again. We would giggle as we swapped secrets and office gossip. We talked about the best way to raise our sons, our fears and the future. But what glued our newfound closeness was something so ordinary — shopping!

We would hit the malls after our training was over and rejoiced at our little finds. It could just be a box of Band-Aids with cartoon characters on them or cheap but exquisite-looking shawls found at a sidewalk stall. We went together twice to Bangkok and we would dash for the market after our teaching duties were over and hunt for the best bargains. When we could no longer carry another shopping bag, we would plop into lounge chairs to end the night with a vigorous Thai foot massage. Back in the hotel we would lay out our stash, try on the clothes or accessories we got for ourselves and model them for each other.

She called me “Her Royal J-ness” in reference to my personality type of being a “judging” person — one who goes by the book and is highly cerebral. Her personality type was called “perceiving,” which was diametrically opposite mine as she was so laid back and relied heavily on intuition. While it might sound like we were totally incompatible, we actually complemented each other quite well.

Sure there were moments when I would get so exasperated with her like when we would travel. I am the kind of person who would have all my documents ready before the plane lands. Dayday would take her sweet time, be among the last to disembark and would fill out her immigration card at the last minute. Seeing me visibly annoyed, she would flash that toothy grin and say, “I bet our luggage won’t even be out when we’re done with immigration!” She was usually right.

I once asked her why she was never frazzled and would just take everything in stride. She attributed this to her being the youngest among seven children; because her five older brothers and one sister would do anything for her — their baby. I would see this most inspiring devotion to Dayday in full force among her siblings, husband, mother, in-laws, cousins and other relatives throughout her journey and up to the very end.

A voracious reader, Dayday cannot sleep without a book by her side. When the cancer had affected her vision, I could just imagine how frustrated she must have been to not be able to read as much. We would also discuss the books we liked and we agreed on one favorite author: Jane Austen. Just last year, when she was supposedly in another remission, we were walking back to the office and discussing a recurring Austen theme where a heroine’s lack of pedigree deters her from a good marriage; and that, to this day any incompatibility in social standing can still cause unrequited love. To this I retorted, “Well, I may not have the pedigree but I always have a good pedicure!” This sent us to fits of uncontrollable laughter all the way to the office.

It is moments like those — when we would just laugh for no apparent reason — that I remember her most. We shared a sense of humor and developed an unspoken code by rolling our eyes and arching our eyebrows simultaneously whenever we wanted to laugh out loud but couldn’t. We called each other “Esbeda” which, in and by itself had no special meaning, but between the two of us the term mutated into various forms with specific nuances. At her wake, some people approached me to ask what Esbeda meant. It would be really difficult to describe it fully so I will just have to say that Dayday took it to her grave and so will I.

There are way too many memories of Dayday that race in my mind but I know that my column inches are limited. The details of her courageous battle with cancer are well documented and have become legendary. She was even featured in a TV show while undergoing treatment at a cancer hospital in China called Fuda and became its “poster girl” for a while. She tried all avenues to find healing — detoxification, acupuncture, organic diets, natural medicine — and I even went along with some of her treatments. For some time I was also on “chemo diet” in my vain attempt to get thin. Her weight loss was staggering. I saw her dress size drop from 12…8…4…2… then zero. When even her size 0 clothes looked too big for her, I already complained because there was no way I could ever catch up with her.

Of all the healing treatments she underwent, however, there was one that she never gave up on and that was her deep faith in God as Healer. When her second bout with a more aggressive cancer returned in 2008 — just a few months after she had weaned her younger son from breastfeeding — she received tons of unsolicited advice including novena prayers to almost every saint in heaven. One day she told me that she was starting to get confused about whom to pray to. So she sought spiritual guidance and her faith continued to build up even when her physical body (previously so fit she even held national records in triathlon) was deconstructing.

The last time I saw her was a week before she died. As she lay in ICU all wired and with a respirator to help her breathe, she said that she loved me. I told her that I loved her too, very much. It was just too surreal for us to see her that way because she had been looking so well in the recent months. She even attended my birthday celebration in February, resplendent in an all-orange outfit. She looked like Peter Pan in orange. In March she watched her two boys perform in school, one dressed as a chili pepper and the other a shark. She was so proud of them. Up until a few days before her ICU confinement, we were sending text messages on this and that.

My last image of Dayday in the ICU is not what I would like to remember. It wasn’t the Dayday I knew and loved. In my mind’s eye I will always see Dayday on a bright day, it is noontime and she is waiting for me at the back of our office building for yet another hilarious escapade during our lunch break. Almost always, I would catch her with eyes closed, a soft smile across her freckled face, and her head tilted towards the sun — just like a sunflower. (You may e-mail me at [email protected])