A friend's Request

This is more like it. The pic I mean.

This is a very old picture of my friend's Mom. Her name - Inocencia B. Ragual.

Since five years ago, I believe she has been into this already. That is desperately looking for a way to find her mom at least.

She showed me tattered and age-worn "adoption documents" which states the name of the couple who were supposed to be her parents. They come from Pangasinan, a town north of Manila. That's supposed to be 300 or so kilometers from Marikina where my friend and I both live with our families.

You see, my friend and I were classmates in high school. But back then she never talked about being adopted. There were just whispers from people who knew her.

It never really bothered us. I for one didn't care. She is a friend, period. I thought perhaps, intimate things such as those were best left unspoken.

But today mother and all, in her golden years as well, she is at that stage of her life where the past is suddenly crucial to her existence. And I understand why.

A person needs to know where he or she came from!!! For her own peace of mind. Right?

She was telling me that in recent years, what she can recall were the lies, the never-ending denials and mostly half-truths from her adoptive father. Messy.

I advised her to just quietly talk to her adoptive father. It seems it's not that simple. (What do I know? There's no adoptive mom but there's another family, and she has siblings who has never been introduced to her. Ittt issss complicated.)

After all these years, it appears that the adoptive father would want to continue denying her the right to know the truth. Why? What for? My friend is old enough to face the truth? By God! She is 52 years old! Her kids are asking her a lot of questions. How does he expect her to handle that?