Josefa "Sefa" Gabuya

My mother was born in Cebu City, Philippines on February 19 1935. She would have had celebrated her 88th birthday then but she decided to leave her earthly existence 3 days before on February 16. She is survived by her 4 children: Cherry, Joseph, Jay and Lucien; 10 grandchildren: Joy, Aaron, Carmel, Brent, Joey, Michael, Francene, Justine, Mary Louise and Katherine and 1 great granddaughter Leyla.

Josefa was a strict school nurse and a wise businesswoman. My mother would make sure her schoolchildren knew how to wash their hands and brush their teeth. Bringing this standard to her profession, she would conduct classroom inspections and coordinate with the teachers’ distribution of nutritional meals; especially with the bread program for schoolchildren. She would climb mountains and reach remote schools who only sees a nurse every year to ensure that their communities would be taken care of. In addition to her nursing profession, Josefa was an astute businesswoman, selling a wide range of products from eggs, charcoal, shoes, dresses cosmetics and jewelries.

She had married her high school sweetheart, and my father, Jess in 1959 and became a pillar of support with him every step of the way. She followed him to Butuan City, then Cagayan de Oro, and back to Cebu City supporting him as branch manager of Marsman & Co., Inc. While supporting my father with his business endeavors, Josefa was a full time career woman and mother, raising a daughter and 3 sons. With the sheer number of responsibilities thrust onto her, she realized that all of this was possible when you have hired help; one responsibility for each of us children in the Philippines. Her dream was to see each of her child educated and obtain a college degree. I became a nurse practitioner, Joseph a mechanical engineer, Jay an electrical engineer and Lucien in Computer technology. All of our accomplishments brought her immense pride and joy seeing the dream for her children come true.

The love that Josefa and Jess shared poured into their hobbies, as they were perfect dance partners, doing the cha-cha and tango in both in their prime, and many years past it! Even after raising all four of us, they still found time on the weekends to sell in their local swap-meet, continuing the profession they both worked through together. That love would eventually bring them closer to us, as the two of them migrated to the US in time for my church wedding in 1988. Despite leaving the careers they once had, my mother and father got second careers in the US so they could bring the rest of the family over to America. My mother worked as a caregiver and my dad worked as a security officer. Hard work was nothing to them. In 2010, they were able to bring Jay, Lucien, and their families over to California finally bringing the entire Gabuya family together again once more.

For my family, my mother and father were also there for me for as long as I can remember. They helped me raise my two sons, Brent and Michael. Brent always gave them a run for their money as I found my mother running barefoot chasing after him in the bank parking lot and screaming for somebody to catch the wild three-year-old kid. Even Michael gave her a hard time as she had to sit at St. Christopher preschool classroom so he would behave and stop crying. After all of the hardships my sons gave them, Grandma and Grandpa picked them up from school every day, sit on top of their Dodge truck parked underneath a tree, and gladly eat their snacks after school. A routine that they kept even as the boys aged. The love my mother had for my sons was so great that despite inheriting a house in San Francisco, she had moved closer to us because her grandsons were crying and looking for her.

My mother was selfless, social, loving and religious. She has been giving financial help to her younger sister Tia Lita so she could be cared for all these years. In addition, she had a sixth sense; seeing and hearing things that nobody else could. Although her fear of this gift cemented her religiosity, her faith in God was unwavering. She claimed she saw the “light” when she had an anaphylactic shock from anesthesia and miscarriage of a fifth pregnancy. Although she said death was “beautiful”, she understood that she could not leave this world as yet. At the time, her four children were very young. What would Dad do without her?

The love she had for my father continued towards the end of his life, taking care of my him in hospice after he had a stroke in 2015. Every day, she would ride a bus to be with him in the nursing home for 3 long years. She couldn’t bear to be apart from him. He passed away in 2018 and her world was never the same.

Today we shed a tear because she is gone from us forever. However, we are comforted because she and dad are together once again in a world without worry and pain. My mother has finally come home.

Goodbye Mommy.

Cherry Ann Gabuya, Daughter