Oracion Pasig loved to dance. When she was just 8 years old, her mother enrolled her in ballet lessons at the dance studio near her
house.
Everyday after school, she would do pirouettes in her room along with other moves she learned in dance class that
week.
When she got older after college her life long dream of becoming a ballet dancer in the Rosevelt San Francisco Dance company was slowly coming true.
She was excited at the news that she would be a part of the troupe, she told her boyfriend Roger Daniels the news over
the phone. That night they would go to dinner to celebrate.
On the way home from dinner, all laughs and happiness at the good news they drove home at 10:47 pm.
On the road, Roger turns on his music. Oracion is looking at his reflection through the glass automobile window.
She is at peace with the world. Their car passes Nethco department store, where her cousin Agapito Elustrado worked.
He turns to her and says “Rae-rae, you did it babe. I don’t know why you doubted. I always.” With one hand on the steering wheel, theother hand gently caresses her arm. He puts both hands back on the wheel to go back to driving.
Oracion thinks about the traveling the Rosevelt group would go. The dancers performed all around the entire world. From Beijing to Moscow, London, and everywhere in between. She thinks about being a little girl in her room performing for her stuffed animals. Her parents would walk into her mid-performance and
Oracion didn’t care. She would continue dancing away.
Roger looks at the road ahead.
“I love u Rae-rae, you know that. The momemt I first saw you dancing on stage at that one thing 4 years ago when we were freshman.” Roger is trying to remember the name of the
fundraiser.
Oracion rolls down the window, the crisp cold air hits her face. “I know.”
Roger grins. “Hey, can you open up the glove compartment and get the envelope?”
Oracion gets the thin white envelope out and just looks at it.
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
“What is it?” She says again.
Roger persuades her to open the envelope.
As she proceeds to use her key chain mini-pocket knife to open the envelope, she 90% knows what that circular object is. She is horrified that Roger is proposing to her, not now. Not when her career is about to take off. Can’t he wait until 3 years down the road, when things get a bit more established and her foundation is more rock solid?
She is silent though.
“Oracion Julia Pasig, what do you say? Will you marr…..”
A set of semi-truck high beams and the blast of a truck horn blasts out towards the young couple in love. And then total blackness. Oracion never even got the chance to hear Roger’s full proposal.
Darkness.
She opens her eyes slowly and sees the ceiling tiles. Everything is sore. Her head hurts, she wants 10 billion ibuprofen to stop the pain. A nurse approaches her bed.
Oracion Pasig calls out to Roger. The nurse looks at her with sympathy and runs to get the doctor. She slowly reaches for the hospital bed cover and painfully removes the
blanket.
In horror, she sees that her left leg is gone.
It had been amputated below the knee.
The doctor tries to explain that she and her fiancee had been in a terrible truck driving accident. The semi-truck
operator had been sleep deprived and ran head long into her and Roger. Oracion is screaming in agony. She calls out to Roger, but the nurse and doctor are trying to calm her down.
Roger didn’t make it. He died instantly.
Oracion is quiet now.
She feels guilty for not answering his proposal. She was selfish in that last instance of his life.
Thinking only of herself and career as a balerina. Now that future is gone, aloneside the only love of her life.
The doctor and nurse leave her room after she becomes quiet. The stun and shock of it all.
In the next few hours, her family and friends trickle in to visit. But Oracion is silent.
She thinks only of the what ifs in her mind. Even as her mother talks to her, her thoughts are elsewhere.
Things become bitter inside.
The days become weeks....
Even with hospital visits from loved ones. Oracion still faces those lonely days and angry nights.
She looks down ocassionally at her stump.
She cries and cries.
In the 15 years since that tragic accident, Oracion Pasig became a bitter woman. She gave up on her dream of becoming a professional dancer and became a angry 5th grade teacher in a local elementary school. She had to survive, it was grueling being her student. All the pain she felt that night losing her boyfriend Roger, her leg, and her love of dancing went out a symbolic 50 story apartment window in one moment.
There have been major improvements to prosthetic legs since her first fitting, but she still limped wherever she went. Going to work as a teacher was a chore. She hated the four walls, it was her prison cells with nagging kids that smelled weird and made too much noise. Every part of her remaining body still hurt. Every thought and feeling in her heart and mind wanted to just crawl into a hole and die with Roger. But she had to pay bills, rent, cover costs of the medical bills, all these years later.
All her students called her limping Lucy behind her back.
Children can be the cruelest of all creatures when they know they will get away with it.
Her cousin Agapito tried to encourage her with weekly visits, but she drowned every free moment away from the classroom in Jack Daniels whiskey and soda. She never was one for beer.
How could this happen to her? Oracion would repeat over and over in her mind. She had everything going for her, and in an instant, all taken away.
One day, a young student with a note goes to the the classroom door. The smiling little girl looks at her new teacher and tells her good morning.
Oracion looks at the little girl and thinks that this kid looks just like her when she was a little girl. That same little girl who loved to dance and be full of joy. Her new student Isabella Fidelis takes her seat at the first open desk and listens intently to her teacher. Being in the fifth grade is a grand experience for Isabella Fidelis.
The teacher tells the young students to open their books to page 158.
Oracion Pasig is a miserable human being at this moment in her life. What she doesn’t realize is that Isabella is gonna lead her to Christ by the end of the school year.
The student is happy and all smiles being in a new school. Making new friends.
...to be Continued in part 2