One of my Twitter contacts, Meg, has just written an account of the death of her mother in an earthquake in her native Philippines, nineteen years ago. It ends -After the funeral was over, the heavens opened and torrential rain came down thick as stair rods. My grandmother finally collapsed, wailing that her daughter would be soaked. The fact that my mother was dead and buried in a coffin six feet in the ground meant nothing to Lola. She could not be consoled. I held my grandmother's prostrate body in my arms, neither of us able to fully comprehend the loss of the woman who bound us together with a chain of kinship, history and love.
Only then did I remember it was my birthday. The day the earth claimed my mother a second time, I turned thirty.
The photo is of Meg (standing) and her mother Daisy, taken in 1983.
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