An Autobiography

Short Autobioghraphy

My name is Aimark Palma Asor. I was born in a busy and crowded city of Manila on July 27, 1987. I am the middle child of Alicia Francisco Palma (a native of Cavite) and Jose Duran Asor (a native of Bicol). My older brother is Joemark Palma Asor; he is thirty-two years of age and has a two-year-old son, Benedict Joe, and married to Kathleen May Oliveros Asor. I share the same birthday with my brother. My youngest sister is named Maria Ainna Palma Asor. She is now thirteen-years-old and a first year high school student of Colegio de Santa Isabel, Manila.

I started schooling when I was six-years-old. My parents enrolled me at Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Intramuros Manila, a school run by the Dominican Friars. There I studied from preparatory to high school (1993-2004). My older brother also went to the same school. Graduating from my beloved Alma Mater, both elementary and high school, I was given a couple of awards and recognitions as a student. Then I entered the Augustinian seminary and went to a seminary-based school in college, which specializes in philosophy, the Saint Thomas of Villanova Institute of Philosophy (2004-2008). I just finished college last academic year 2007-2008. Now I am a novice of the Augustinian Order, Province of Sto. Niño de Cebu, Philippines. I am currently residing at the Augustinian Novitiate and Prayer House in Mohon, Talisay City, Cebu and hopefully I’ll stay here for one canonical year and be back in Manila for theological studies.


Experience of Him:

When I was asked by my dear college English professor to write a short autobiography and an experience marking the most significant presence of God in my life, I paused and sighed at the thought of having to share many, but also afraid of not having written even one from them.
My experience of God…it is an opening statement I wish to write about; however I have a problem on how to single out an instance among my myriad experiences of Him. And so I thought of narrating an incident in my life that happened almost two-years-ago.

I was on my second year as a college-student seminarian when I started to doubt about the sincerity of my call to the religious life and my response to it. During that time I totally was emotionally and rationally devastated. There was inner turmoil in my batch and many pointed at me as the predominant reason for all the conflicts. Externally, things were worse; internally I was exploring the idea of not being able to endure the challenges and finish the thing I have started. All I know then was that I have to come up with a solution and decide what to do soon.
After an emotional batch open forum one evening, then I finally made up my mind to leave the seminary. At that moment I was thinking of transferring to another Order and perchance pursuing what I might not be able to finish with the Augustinians. The following evening I spoke to my mom over the phone. I was then trying to convince her with my decision. She was apprehensive on it and told me to think about it a thousand times. But I was determined to leave and start life anew. It was just all what I had in mind, also to end the mental torture I was experiencing.

The following day, my life went in its usual manner. I was then preparing myself for the many changes I was about to initiate in my life. Afterwards I started thinking that it’s the time to begin another chapter in my book of life by ending the present one. Though resolute with my decision, sadness beset my entire being. A question began to emerge: Am I ready to leave the life I have chosen? I thought the answer would be yes, but I was wrong. The real answer was that I really did not know if I was.

That same day after lunch I was hanging around the receiving area of the seminary to make a phone call when a classmate told me that our Father Master wished to see me. I immediately went to his office to know what he desired from me. I knocked on his office door and he right away opened it and asked me to take a seat, and so I did. Then he told me that he wanted to tell me something and be ready for what I will be hearing a few moments from then. He inquired if I knew of any sickness of my biological father. I said he has diabetes, and that is all I know. Then he proceeded by telling me that a close friend of my mom, who also happens to be a good benefactor of the Order, called up informing him that my father has just passed away from this temporal life earlier that morning.

Right now, I still find it difficult to look back and try to put into words the feelings I had that moment. I was calm, upon hearing the news, yet, a part of my being was screaming at the news I just heard. My beloved biological father has just died.
I was a philosophy student and so rationality prevailed over me. I hid my feelings and acted shocked but appeared all right. Our Father Master instructed our Community driver to take me home and told me to update him about the happenings. In short, I was permitted to leave the seminary for a while and be with my family in one of the most crucial moments of our lives.
When I reached home, my younger sister, who was ten-years-old at that time, received me and started to blurt out her feelings at the loss of our father. I didn’t know what to do then. I was rational yet did not know what to do. I learned that moment that reason at times cannot contend with man’s emotion. I just told my sister to cease from crying and calm down. I was very calm but my inner self could not allow my external composure to break down. Afterwards my brother, also arrived and people in our house had expressed their grief, while I hardly controlled my emotion and let them see I was handling things differently.

I and my siblings went directly to the funeral parlor where my father’s remains would be prepared for the wake that night. Upon arriving at the parlor’s office, we saw our mom seated in a corner, gazing at the wilderness. Not saying a word, I and my siblings hugged her tightly and she screamed in tears. My father died unexpectedly. I even learned from her that they were not in good terms the night before Papa passed away. They had a misunderstanding that made my mom not pay heed of him the following morning before going out with some of her friends. Mom heard the news from my guardian. My guardian called up my mom that morning and told her my dad wanted to be brought to the clinic of our family physician; he was not feeling well she said. Then there was another call from her. That moment my guardian got intensely nervous and did not know how to tell my mom the news. The doctor got the phone from her and told my mom about the shocking incident that happened that day. It was an incident that changed our lives. Alicia Palma Asor is now a widow, with two sons and a daughter. As for my siblings and I, we were now fatherless.

Years before my father died, we began to experience financial bankruptcy. Our family businesses, three of them, got bankrupt almost simultaneously and closed, leaving us nothing but debts. My dad decided to engage himself in the real estate business. I greatly admired his industriousness and hardworking attitude; however, we were still suffering from debts. I was in high school then, and almost did not finish schooling due to the high tuition my parents had to pay for me and my sister because we were both in private schools. My brother then had no stable job. He graduated from an international aeronautics school, and could have been a promising pilot if only we did not go through that financial aridity. These were the things that happened before I entered the seminary. At the time I was about to enter, I was asking my parents if they would be permitting me; my mom said her yes right away, but for my dad, the answer did not come quickly as my mom’s. Nonetheless, mom convinced him to allow me and later on my dad was even proud of me as in my chosen life.

Things apparently were not going well when we lost our father. Little by little I started to ask…”Why God?,” and “Why us?”, “Why now when we are so down and almost have no one to turn to?” I was never answered that time. Patient was I to live and wait for the next things that will happen, yet I was flustered.

During the time my father’s casket was being brought inside the funeral parlor, I could not believe what I had been seeing. I could not believe that the dad or Papa I saw a month ago was the father I was then seeing enclosed in a wooden box, a being incapable of movement, a breathless being. Most people were crying as those carrying his casket passed by us. My mom was wailing and my siblings too. I managed to keep my tears from falling, and if they fell, I made sure no one saw it.

Many of my relatives admired me for that display of attitude and character and approached me saying, “You enlighten your mom about the situations that life does not end here, that there is still another; and that the goodbye with your father is his hello to the other life.” Wow…what a soothing piece of advice but it was not that easy. However, I tried explaining the same thing to my mom and little sister…that life does not end here…that the being we have inside the coffin is no longer my father but the temporal frame of the Jose “Joe” Asor we used to know. I was able to convince my sister and she ceased from shedding tears, but I was the one who started to shed tears inside.

Now almost two years has passed and I sometimes am afraid to recall and look back at that very particular moment of my life. I fret that I am not over it yet. But now I ask myself, “What is that pretension about?” “Why did I have to be pretentious of my real feelings then?” I believe that that was about letting my family realize that we must find meaning in grief, that the goodbyes in this world are not the end of everything. We could not be so physically certain of that for now but for sure in the future days to come we will be.

In a man’s journey in this plane of existence, it is inevitable for him not to encounter deep down moments and fascinating discoveries in life. To grow or mature is a tied-up consequence of one’s evidence of man’s exile on earth. Life is not easy. It is a risk from the moment an individual is conceived. However, the risk is consummated as one begins to breathe the air of this world and stride along its rough edges.

How do I connect the story I just shared with my particular experience of God? It is simple…it is in life that I am experiencing Him. Perhaps the reader of this piece of writing would find it uninteresting now that I revealed that my experience of God in my life was not as astonishing and maybe as deeply moving as others have it. It is in dullness and paleness that I experienced the Giver of life. It is in the silence of my lamenting heart that I felt the abiding infinite presence of my Maker. I could ask God, Why?, but I could never blame Him for what had happened. He must have something for us that we might not totally understand for now, but perchance in the future this Master plan will be clear to us. The ordinariness of my experience of Him made it extraordinary.

Now I understand that His presence in our lives could be felt through those people surrounding us. Before that was just a quixotic idea for me; nonetheless the world of that idea touched the mirror of reality I now face. I was asking where God was in that sorrowful mystery of our lives. Had He abandoned us? Is there really a God Who watches over us? He is with us, as Scripture says. But that I did not feel, I thought then. The death of my father was a turning point not just for me but also for my family. It was an experience that tested our love for one another, an experience that could have drawn me away from Him.

The experience of death or the loss of someone dear to a person can help him comprehend more that above the temporality of this life there exists a life without end and that we shall also be born there. I lost my biological father but that is because he has already been called by our Eternal Father, to whom we are brothers.

Some of us might have experienced God in their lives in a more unusual way than that of mine, but we must not forget that our real experience of Him happens every single moment of our lives. I wish to believe that in the lowest instance of our lives He is actually with us. His silence communicates in a very majestic language that transcends all linguistic categories of time and space. He journeys with us. He does not need to say a word to console us. He sees us and knows our innermost thoughts and feelings because He remains to be our Father forever; someone who will always be faithful to us whatever happens.

The question of where God is amidst the evil in the world is actually a question that seeks to point out my experience of Him through my discernment. It is a critical inquiry a person cannot but ask. However the search for the answer goes on and on, for the process it is called life. In many little ways I may have already asked the same question in various circumstances and I still will until the end of my pilgrimage.

God will always be the is that makes me have my being and the being of everyone else. My father had come to pass in this world and that made me share his experience. His death made him experience God. Through his death we, his family, also experienced God. We learned that one thing is certain; we shall all go back to Him.