What you should know about Lola Osang (And what grandparents ought to emulate)

My Lola (grandmother) Osang is now 78 and while she currently has illness, growing up, I've always believed that she will outlive us.

With unfeigned strength 

She has broken her wrist a few years back after slipping while drawing water from the well but still she recuperated fast and was even able to watch over her three great grand kids. Last year, she was ran over by a pedicab that carried a few sacks of sand and she recovered from it.

In 2009, we stayed overnight in a resort. My mother, my brave little sister and I were too scared to try the pool slide, which was about 12 to 15 feet high; but not my grandmother. She was even the first one to try it out and we just followed suit.

Lola Osang grew up helping her parents take care of the farm. She's used to hard work and at 78, she still thinks she has the same strength as what she had when she was 30. Her last endeavor was that she climbed the roof of her house to paint it. I was appalled when I learned it from my mom but the shock subsided when I remembered that my Lola Osang is really a superwoman.

A great sense of adventure

My late grandfather Lolo Paking and Lola Osang left their kids in Surigao to look for greener pastures in Manila in the 60's. It must be very difficult for Lola to leave her three kids who have just started schooling. Armed with nothing but faith and perseverance, my grandparents were able to put up a dressmaking shop and a repair shop and to raise their kids in Manila.

Early riser

I've grown up getting used to being with my Lola Osang every summer until I was in highschool. I remember that she gets up very early to prepare our breakfast, to clean up the house and take care of her garden. Usually, my alarm clock will be the sound of her broom as it brushes dead leaves and dirt. I still find it amazing how she can turn a bushy area to a beautiful garden - something I wasn't able to learn.

Quiet but caring

Lola Osang is a very reserved person, I think that's something that I got from her. Since I was a kid, I remember that she's always in action. She's always busy with something-doing the laundry, preparing meals, cleaning the house, taking care of her plants or even if she's watching the TV, she's folding the clothes. She doesn't tell us that she loves us verbally but her actions spoke a lot louder than any verbal expression of love.

Easy to please

If other grandparents tend to become impossible as they get older - not my Lola Osang, because she's very easy to please. She'll be delighted to be given a small box of pizza or to be invited to an outing at the nearest beach resort. Her great grand kids make her giggle like a kid. In my 9 years of working, she has only asked me for one thing and she only mentioned it to me last year when I asked if there's anything that she wants me to give her - she asked for a thin golden necklace where she can put her Queen Elizabeth pendant. To date, I'm still asking God for a blessing so I can purchase the necklace for her.

When her television was broken, she never asked any of her kids or grandkids to buy her or lend her one. And when we offered her our secondhand television, she was so excited that she asked my cousins to pick up the TV from our house that instant.

No record of wrong

Lola Osang is someone who will complain only when it's too much for her to handle. Most of the time, I don't hear her say something against her kids, grandkids and other relatives. 

Timely revelations

Last year, I was blessed to have a heart to heart chat with her and she told me something that quite shocked me. Lola shared that she was not accepted by my Lolo Paking's parents for a long time especially since they were too young when they got married. She added that she was only able to step inside my great grandparents' house when her three kids - my mother, my late Uncle Rene and my Uncle Oral - were already professionals.

For my thirty years of existence, I have never heard that story. And I had no inkling that such issue existed. At that moment, I adored her all the more because she never raised her kids or grandkids to hate those who wronged her. She taught us, through her actions, to be hardworking, to love unconditionally, and to keep our relationship with God a priority.