We Lost Our Son and Stayed Married
Ramon and Cielo lost their son at nine. Most couples around them expected the marriage to end. They explain how they grieved differently, fought about it, and found a way to stay.
The Friends Who Came and the Friends Who Didn't
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Show notes
This episode
Joanna kept a notebook in the year after Paolo died: who called, who came, who sent a message and then nothing. She reads from it without naming anyone. Then Marites, widowed in Cebu at 41, reads from hers.
- The wake: everyone comes, and why that is not the test
- Month three, when the casseroles stop and the real list begins
- The friend who said nothing clever and just kept turning up with pancit
- Why some people vanish, and the forgiveness Joanna eventually found for them
- What to do this week if you are the friend who went quiet
Next time: a couple who lost a child and stayed married, and what it took.
Transcript
Hello, I am Joanna Reyes-Villanueva, and this is Who Sits With You Now. I am a grief counsellor in Manila, and in 2021 my husband Paolo died suddenly, when our daughter was four. This show is not about grief itself, exactly. It is about what grief does to everyone around you, to the marriage, the siblings, the friends, the in-laws, the people you thought would be there. In the year after Paolo died I kept a notebook of who came and who did not. Today I am going to read from it, without names, and without anger, because I have had time to understand most of it. Then Marites, a listener in Cebu who was widowed at 41, is going to read from hers. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Please sit with us.
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