Barely a week after Anette's mom passed away and exactly 6 days after Donna announced that her grandmother in Davao died, it was my very own grandfather's turn.

Apparently, my aunts and even my mother, who went to Bicol ahead of us, didn't have enough courage to tell me that Lolo was gone. It was already evening when my cousin Karen broke the news to me through text when he actually passed away that very morning.

Since we started having plans of spending the holidays in Bicol, I have already planned to do my share for the christmas dinner. It would be the very first christmas dinner in my living memory that we will be spending it there. I even imagined myself doing the spaghetti, something I have never done before. The event would be something special, I'm sure and I wanted to help in making it something out of the ordinary.

But now that he is gone, I'm sure it's not going to be the way I had expected it to be anymore. Fourteen years ago, Hansel's father and my mother's youngest father died on christmas eve. Needless to say, it is no longer something we haven't gone through before but I'm certain it is still going to be as special.