Remembering KC de Venecia: ‘To love as you loved, and hope as you hoped...’

Up to now, even if she gives away innumerable Christmas presents, Pangasinan Rep. Gina de Venecia still does not have a Christmas tree in her house.

Though she has moved on “and the intervals between my tears have become longer and longer,” Gina still cannot bear to see a Christmas tree in her house since her youngest child KC perished nine years ago at age 16 in a fire that also gutted their home.

The fire started from an overheated Christmas tree.

Last Dec. 16, family and friends of Gina and her husband, former Speaker Joe de Venecia, gathered at their Makati City residence to celebrate the life of KC.

Nine years ago, firemen responding to the blaze at the De Venecia home found the beautiful teenager’s body in a bathtub in her brother Christopher’s room, a wet towel draped around her. She followed all the rules to keep herself alive in the midst of the fire, and after calling her older sister Carissa for help on her cell phone, “Ate, help! Help!” Rescuers couldn’t reach her on time because of the heavy grills on the windows of the De Venecia home.

Every year, their family and loyal friends attend the Dec. 16 gathering. And then, there are the members of Inang Naulila sa Anak (INA) Foundation, a group of orphaned mothers, who, upon the initiative of Gina de Venecia and Ali Sotto, banded themselves to help fortify each other.  After all, who could understand them better if not another mother who experienced the same grief? In 2006, they opened their first project, the INA Healing Center that provides free counseling and psycho-social support to orphaned mothers.

Nine years after her death, the influence of KC in the lives of her parents and the people she had touched was reflected in a prayer written by her brother Christopher for the commemorative Mass:  To believe as you believed in each of us, even now. To live as you lived your life with no regret. To laugh as you laughed in times of distress. To love as you loved, and hope as you hoped. To fight as you fought, even in the final moments of your life…

Nine years after KC passed on, her dad JDV busies himself with ground-breaking peace initiatives as one of the founding fathers of ICAPP (International Conference of Asian Political Parties) and the IESCO (International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organization), while Gina now takes center stage as a lawmaker representing their home district in Pangasinan. Gina also heads the Association of Women Legislators, the 79-member women’s caucus in the House of Representatives.   

Gina also has grown to become a global women’s advocate.  Just last week, she spoke about women empowerment in two international conferences — the Global Peace Convention (GPC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the 6th Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA) in Islamabad, Pakistan. 

And last Thursday, Dec. 19, she led a group of congresswomen to bring relief goods to some 6,000 families in Palo, Leyte. In the same mission, she also took along INA members who gave grief counseling to families who lost their loved ones — an experience they are no strangers to.

As Christopher wrote: “If the choice of hope is the act of keeping your memory alive, then making the most out of our God-given talents, loving the least of our brethren, laughing in times of distress and hoping for a better tomorrow despite the constant political and actual storms, is the act of keeping your memory alive.

“ That is the promise we made to you those many years ago — That through us, your memory shall live…”

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